Shades of Gray
by ruth baulding
Summary: When the Chancellor's office pressures the Jedi Council into a morally ambiguous undertaking, Obi Wan encounters deathsticks, happy hour at the Outlander Club, a Clawdite assassin with good taste in men, and the young, unwitting pawn of an evil Sith lord.
1. Chapter 1

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

Anakin watched the scene with unbecoming envy. Or jealousy. A little of both, maybe.

It should be him down there. He should be the honored one who was invited to a private sparring competition with Mace Windu; he should be the one who sat on the Council; he should be the one whom everyone doted on and admired and talked about.. He was the Hero. It should be him down there. He should be the one exchanging taunts and mocking jests with Obi Wan. He should be the one _almost_, but not quite, hitting the Jedi master as he stood invincible in the eye of the storm, his brilliant Soresu defense inviting aggression by the very personal smug aloofness it conveyed. It should be him, and not Mace, who enjoyed the banter and the thrill of clashing 'sabers and the surge of the Force as it played around them and the trust and the…friendship.

He didn't know whether he wanted Mace's friendship, or whether he wished the stern Korun master did not have Obi Wan's. It didn't matter. Either way, he wanted. He ached. And his knee still hurt.

_Kriff it._ That was Ahsoka's fault, though he would never blame her for it. A master protected his Padawan, end of story. Obi Wan had taken a few for him over the years- he remembered each occasion with an undiminished pang of gratitude and guilt. Even if he had more than evened the score by saving his –former – master a half dozen times since the war began. Ahsoka had gone down in the face of that ambush on Thermia, and he had jumped in to save her. And succeeded. And taken a bolt in the knee for his troubles. So what? He had still scrapped the entire kriffing legion of droids, screaming his rage and agony out into the Force, where it ignited into explosive destruction. Kriffing droids. Pain could be a source of power, of strength.

Back here in the Temple it was different. The healers wanted him off the restored but still tender joint as it regained strength and flexibility. No campaigns, no missions, no sparring. He would have gone insane in two days flat were it not for the prospect of unlimited nights with Padme. He could work around a stiff knee in that regard. A Jedi was resourceful.

It wasn't the injury, or being temporarily grounded, that irked him. It was the sense of things transpiring without him. He and his Padawan had been sent out to Thermia almost immediately after the Naboo debacle, when he had saved the Supreme Chancellor twice in one day, though the Council seemed to think Obi Wan deserved the credit. Last he had seen his mentor, the man had still been incarcerated in Rako Hardeen's ugly visage, a disguise so thorough and convincing that he wondered what obscene method Republic Intelligence had used to create it. Weeks later, when he had arrived back from Pylas Minor and Thermia, victorious but wounded, he had been met at the Temple hangar bay by a grave and worried Obi Wan.

Sort of.

"Where's _Master_ Kenobi?" Anakin had grinned. "You look like that guy I met twelve years ago on Tatooine."

"Yes…well," Obi Wan had muttered, passing a hand over his smooth chin as though seeking the beard which was so conspicuously lacking. His short crop of freshly grown hair sprouted up straight off his head in a comically unruly fashion, strictly contrasting with its owner's disciplined serenity. "The follicles were damaged during the reversal process…..I'm told it should be temporary."

Anakin briefly contemplated growing his own scruff out, just to rub it in Obi Wan's face, no pun intended….but a Jedi shall know not revenge. He settled for an amused smirk.

"Anakin, your leg….the mission report was typically lacking in relevant details."

"I'm fine." He waved away the concern, crutch or no. He also waved away the hover chair one of the apprentice healers was steering forward hopefully. If he had to submit to their care he would at least get there on his own two feet. The Padawan cringed and withdrew respectfully. "Besides, if they can't patch me up, they can always just slap on another prosthesis."

"That's not funny." Obi Wan said. He looked tired.

"What? Are you having nightmares again, master?" The look he got in reply was eloquent, and revealed more than it was meant to. How time had turned the tables…it used to be Anakin who suffered from nightmares. Now he only dreamed of Padme. He needed no restless dreams of terror to visit his nights: as General in the Grand Army, he lived a waking nightmare every day. Most the time, he closed himself off to the world and to memory when he slept. He had too much to forget.

"I am glad to see you in one piece." A hand rested on Anakin's shoulder, lingered.

He wasn't in the mood for sentiment. "Yeah, well, at least you didn't have to attend _my_ funeral."

It was a kick in the gut, and Obi Wan took it meekly. Why did he have to make it so kriffing hard to bear a grudge? Anakin's leg was hurting again – a lot. He shifted uneasily. "Look, master, I gotta go, before the healers wet their pants…" His impudent grin was answered with a tiny smile, one that meant _how very shocking, Master Skywalker. Such lack of decorum._

"Well, we mustn't keep them waiting. Better you than me."

"Next time, let's just make sure we work together. Arrange it with the Council, would you?" And he had left, limping off on his crutch to bravely face the horror of the healer's ward, confident that Obi Wan _would _arrange it with the Council. They needed to be a team again. He was sick of being left out in the cold. Sick of stomaching the Council's lies. Obi Wan's lies.

The screech of saber blades locked together and spitting blue and purple fire jolted him back to the present moment. The combatants were in a bind, struggling against each other with brute strength and the Force. Obi Wan was no fool; he released first and backflipped out of the stalemate, blade singing high as he spun it in a mad defensive circle, barely blocking Mace's hot attack. They moved across the dojo floor at a wild pace, Mace pushing Obi Wan almost back to the wall, unable to penetrate his defense but now definitely wielding the upper hand.

_Come on, master…!_

The thought was costly; Obi Wan's eyes flicked in his direction, a mute acknowledgement of his presence and his encouragement. Mace struck home, sliding past the blue saber's guard and slashing hard, knocking it too far down, then sweeping up to land thrumming a centimeter from Obi Wan's neck.

Both men chuckled a little, and the sabers powered down. ObI Wan bowed to the tall Korun Jedi, and ran a hand through his damp hair. "That makes the score stand eleven to five in your favor. I may decline your next invitation," he said.

"I don't think so," Mace replied, in his sonorous baritone. "I know you too well." His white smile flashed for the briefest of moments, and his eyebrows rose. "Besides, if you won't spar with me, I'll be stuck with Master Yoda."

Humor sparkled in the Force. Anakin felt a surge of renewed envy. Or jealousy. Or both. He watched Mace grip the younger man's shoulder briefly as the two of them drifted toward the exit to the showers. There was something vaguely paternal in that gesture- an echo of Master and Padawan, a hint of the affection which did not officially exist. Lies, lies, lies, lies. The Council was steeped in them. Mace was steeped in them. Obi Wan, too – he was up to his neck in lies, and in danger of drowning.

Who knew what deception the pair of them would come up with next?

* * *

><p>Master Yoda hunched in his chair, clutching his gimer stick comfortably against his chest, its tip resting on one of his clawed feet, his chin propped upon its blunt handle. His eyes shifted in amusement from left to right, watching the contest of wills play itself out. The remainder of the Council – wise as they were – also tactfully avoided interference, choosing to wait out the storm, and its amusing ramifications.<p>

"Have you another suggestion?" Obi Wan politely inquired, inclining his head toward the Korun Jedi sitting on Yoda's left. "Is anyone else available?"

Mace steepled his fingers, sighed. "No. But I hesitate to send you back out into the field, undercover, so soon after the last mission."

"Why not?" the younger man asked, blandly. "I _am_ still dead, after all. We ought to capitalize on that convenient fact."

Yoda caught the undercurrent of wry resentment, even if nobody else did. He hooded his eyes, let his gaze rest upon the Jedi seated to his right. Obi Wan Kenobi's dark humor had taken an even subtler, darker twist since the beginning of the war. The Jedi master sat at his ease, legs crossed, one hand absently stroking his chin, eyes absolutely glittering with sharp intelligence, with pointed meaning.

"The Council's decision it was not, to continue that deception," he intervened sharply. "Know this, you do, Master Kenobi."

Obi Wan turned to him, eyebrows lifting in surprise at the near-reprimand. He looked startlingly like his much younger Padawan self; for a moment Yoda half-expected to see the tall and dignified figure of Qui Gon Jinn hovering somewhere in the background, smugly amused by the exchange. Indeed, the Force more than half-suggested that this was still, somehow, the case.

A dip of the head, a respectful lowering of the eyes. Rebuke accepted. Yoda huffed and laid the gimer stick across his knees, his ears twitching as he raked the remainder of the Council with an imperious look. They had debated this already; they would not return to a sore and overworked topic.

"If we can find someone else better qualified, and available immediately, I will of course retract my offer quite happily," Obi Wan stated, holding one hand open and palm upward in a conciliatory gesture. He looked expectantly at Mace.

The tall senior Councilor sighed in annoyance and closed his eyes briefly. "You win, Kenobi. I'm sure you've already studied the duty roster thoroughly."

Humor was not often indulged within the sober circle of this chamber. Obi Wan's mouth tightened at the corners. "Like a lonely gundark looking for a mate."

Mace's eyes widened slightly, but he kept his stern composure intact. "I'm sure. Just don't get yourself killed," he growled, a note of sincere concern betraying the hard lines of his visage.

Yoda's regard slid back to his right. Obi Wan couldn't resist the temptation. "I'll try," he promised gravely. "…An encore performance _would_ be rather tedious."

* * *

><p>Anakin opened the door to his private quarters, aware already of his visitor's identity. "Come in," he said, although the summons was unnecessary. Obi Wan slid the door shut behind him with a wave of the hand.<p>

"You know," Anakin complained, "You spent all those years lecturing me about frivolous use of the Force, and I don't think I've ever once seen you actually touch a door release."

"I see injury has not dulled your wit," Oib Wan observed, sliding the room's single unoccupied meditation cushion toward himself with another wave of the hand. "And I am flattered that you remember _anything_ I ever told you."

"Ha." Anakin tossed the datapad he had been perusing across the room, with a distinctly not Force-enhanced and very much irritated flick of the wrist. It landed with a harsh clatter on the cluttered workbench built into the far wall. He stretched his aching leg out on the narrow sleep couch and shifted so he could have a better view of his friend, perched cross-legged on the round cushion. Late afternoon light filtered through the narrow slatted window, cast thin stripes on the hard floor. Sunset approached; and at sunset, he would leave the Temple.

Obi Wan 's eyes narrowed. "You aren't still sneaking out to Underlevel scrap piles at night, are you, Anakin?" he asked sharply.

_Poodoo._ Anakin tightened his mental shields. Obi Wan was just too kriffing perceptive for his own good. "You know me," he quipped. "Boredom makes me dangerous. At least you don't have to come chase me down anymore. That lowlife scene doesn't suit you, master."

Obi Wan ran a pensive hand over his chin. "Yes," he sighed, "Unfortunately, I'm about to get my fill of it."

"What?" Anakin stiffened, sitting upright and staring at the older man. "You're going on assignment again." His fist clenched. He hadn't been summoned to a Council meeting, so that meant… "Without me."

"We aren't attached at the hip, you know, Anakin."

"You said you would arrange it so –"

"I said no such thing," Obi Wan hissed at him. A muscle leapt along his jaw. Without the beard he was a lot, lot easier to read. Maybe that's why he wore it. "My position on the Council is not a tool to be used for the promotion of-"

"Don't lecture me about the Council, " Anakin warned. The Council could go to the hells. They left him out of everything, and Obi Wan couldn't be bothered to stick up for him, to include him, to _trust_ him. It was clear where his loyalties lay…now. It used to be different between them, before the war. Before Obi Wan's unexpected elevation in rank. Before…Hardeen. "So where are you going?" he snarled.

Obi Wan's expression was veiled, now. Anakin thought he caught a glimmer of hurt in those mocking eyes, but he couldn't be sure. Obi Wan didn't really have feelings, anyway, so it didn't matter.

"Let me guess – it's another solo undercover mission, and you can't _tell _me!" he shouted.

"I came here to tell you," the Jedi master said quietly, in his infuriatingly calm Negotiator voice.

"Well, you just did, so shove off. Go spar with Mace or rub noses with Yoda. Kriff off," Anakin growled, his knee aching twice as badly as before, a tightness clawing in his chest, a twisting knot that only Padme could unwind.

"Anakin, I –"

"I said go away," he muttered, clamping down on the raging envy. Or jealousy. Or both. "Go away. Please." _Before I lose it, before I turn on you, Before… "_Please."

As he rose and made a formal bow, striding toward the door with the dignity of a …well, of a _Jedi,_ Obi Wan suddenly looked a lot like his much younger self again. Anakin hadn't seen that expression on his face since the night the Council had told Qui Gon Jinn that the boy he had discovered on Tatooine would not be trained; the night when Qui Gon had been his champion and father figure, declaring that he would train Anakin although he already had a Padawan learner; the night Qui Gon had effectively dismissed his current apprentice with a few brief words of lukewarm praise.

It felt good to see Obi Wan stunned and betrayed. _Go cry on Mace's shoulder, _Anakin thought at his mentor's retreating back. Obi Wan waved the door open with the Force and disappeared into the hushed corridor beyond, dark cloak sweeping the floor behind him. Anakin waited a moment and then slammed the door shut with a Force push so unrestrained and powerful that it shorted out the pressure system and showered down a curtain of sparks.

_Poodoo. _Now he would have to call the maintenance droids in to fix the star-forsaken thing. He punched a small dent in the wall with his mechno-hand, just for good measure, and then rose. The sun was setting.

And he welcomed the growing darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

Obi Wan kept his hood pulled well forward, and his hands folded into opposite sleeves. The few aides and secretaries who occasionally crossed his path passed by blindly, easily swayed by his diffuse Force suggestion of invisibility. He was not here; not interesting; nothing to notice. They would not even remember having seen him.

The Supreme Chancellor's private quarters were cold. He pulled the cloak closer about himself. He had never been this far into the man's inner sanctum; but the clandestine nature of his mission, and the fact that he was still _dead_ in the public eye, necessitated a more private milieu for this meeting. The rich crimson tones of the walls did not warm the air; how odd that a man born on Naboo, a planet with a famously temperate climate, should prefer his personal accommodations to be so chilly.

He studied the bronzium frieze on the wall behind him. A battle scene, from the Republic's ancient history. An epic struggle in which the grotesquely sculpted figures of Jedi Knights were impaled and massacred by their foes…a heroic turning point in the old wars, but surely rather graphically presented here. His eyes traveled over the agonized clots and smears of the casting, the hot metal warped and shaped by some ferocious hand, hammered and bent into these exaggerated shapes as though in an ecstasy of sadistic enjoyment, and then left to cool and harden into rough hewn splendour.. He shivered, despite himself.

He never had been one for the modern school of art. There was no accounting for the tastes of politicians. He turned away.

And sill the Chancellor failed to appear. He released a long breath, chastising himself for his lack of patience. It was not as though he were eager to begin this distasteful assignment. He reached for the Force, out of deep-ingrained habit, drawing in its soothing currents….but it was disturbed, as it was everywhere in the Legislative district. A palpable veil of darkness hung over the Republic's heart, a cancer eating away at its vitality. Dooku had told him….on Geonosis….but that thought was for another place and time. Out of deep instinct, he shielded his thoughts and guarded his mind. Something was amiss here. Something….elusive. Just beyond his grasp, beyond the grasp of the entire Council, beyond the grasp of the Light itself, perhaps. He did not trust it.

Trust. Now there was something elusive. He grimaced, remembering how easily, how whole-heartedly, he had given his own trust to Qui Gon Jinn all those years ago. Trust had seemed boundless, ubiquitous, natural as breathing then. Now, it was as rare and precious as the most refined aurodium, and attained with the same degree of effort. Anakin's trust he had fought for, earned, fought to keep, over and over again. He had labored at the forge, hammering and refining that trust for so many years…even after his former Padawan had been Knighted. And yet, despite his heart-rending efforts, that trust had deep flaw lines. It shattered too easily, cracked and spilt beneath blows that should have left only a scratch or a dent.

It was perhaps badly damaged now. Anakin's snarling dismissal of him yesterday confirmed his suspicion that the young Jedi had not recovered from the sense of betrayal engendered by the Hardeen affair. It had been his decision to include Anakin in the deception. Yoda and Mace had been wary, arguing that the boy's attachment would lead him to rash action. He had objected that the ruse would not be a success unless Anakin's reaction were heartfelt.

That had been….a lie.

He released another breath. The Force knew what he had done. He had sat in the circle of the Council and lied. Because of trust. Because of his lack of trust. He knew of Anakin's too-intimate friendship with the Chancellor, of the misplaced paternal feelings his former Padawan harbored for the man. He knew it better than anyone else, and he feared it. He also knew, because Dooku had told him, because the Force told him, that somehow, somewhere, the hidden Lord of the Sith had access to the Chancellor's office, to at least some of what passed therein. By what dark art that might have been affected or sustained, he knew not. But the fact of it was something he could not deny.

If he told Anakin, then Anakin might tell the Chancellor. And that inexplicable leak might pass it on to Dooku's ears. And that would have been an instant and incontrovertible death sentence, an end to the mission and a far worse tragedy for Anakin than the planned farce and mock-funeral had been. He knew this; he saw it with cold certainty. And yet he could not openly express the damning fact to the Council, for to do so would be to condemn Anakin. And that he would not do. Because Anakin trusted Palpatine too well, Obi Wan could not trust Anakin. He had chosen to let his friend suffer for a short time than risk making him the unwitting tool of a disastrous betrayal.

The Council had not made him do it. He had done it himself. And it had cost him a decade of hard-earned trust. That was the severe consequence, the retribution visited upon him, for lying. Lying out of dreadful fear for another. Out of attachment.

He was really no better than a politician, a useless collection of half-truths and hyperbole.

As though on cue, the burnished outer doors slid open, to admit Palpatine himself. He waved his escort of four elite Senatorial guards aside. The blue-armored commandos took up positions outside the doors as they slid closed again, leaving Obi Wan alone with the charismatic and cultured Chancellor.

"Ah," the man beamed, offering an engaging smile and a gracious open-handed gesture, "I must apologize for my tardiness. There is so much to do, I fear, that I often fall prey to the delusion that I am running both sides of this accursed war."

Obi Wan lowered his hood and made the customary deep bow. He did not appreciate dark humor in others. At least not in politicians. "Chancellor."

"Master Kenobi," Palpatine smiled, "I have not seen you since the Festival on Naboo. I must say, your looks are much improved since then."

More dark humor. He was not amused. "I am here to discuss the final details of the mission. The Council has decided to honor your request."

The Chancellor's nod was grave. "Discreetly, of course," he said. "There can be no suggestion at all that the Republic or the Jedi are protecting a drug lord of Hojo Lenn's reputation and power."

Indeed not. "I will see to the matter personally, Chancellor. We have opted for an undercover operation."

Palpatine offered a charming lift of the eyebrows. "You seem to be developing that talent quite enthusiastically. You are quite the actor these days, Master Kenobi."

What a repulsive notion. "I should hope not," he said, curtly. "I will obtain a position as one of Lenn's personal retainers, and stay close to him until the assassination threat has effectively passed."

"Excellent." The Chancellor strolled across the lush carpeting to his desk. "Once the funds transfer to the Galactic Treasury has been completed, I think there will be no further need for concern. A matter of days, at the most."

It was his turn to nod - a much safer response than any words which might come to mind. He did not relish the prospect of playing secret bodyguard to a man who had effectively bribed the Republic into providing his extensive Mid Rim holdings with perpetual security in the form of war ship patrols; the fact that this same man was a criminal of the vilest breed was one he could not afford to think about.

"I am glad," Palaptine remarked softly, as he made his precise way around the edge of the polished desk, "That the Council was able to set aside any scruples they might have about Lenn's business pursuits, in light of the greater good. The money he has offered the Republic could make a key difference in the war. These are times when hard decisions must be made, if we are not to utterly perish."

"The Council is aware of the moral dilemma presented by war," he answered neutrally. The Council was aware; and he personally was nauseated and perpetually heartsick with it.

The Chancellor graced him with his most condescending smile. "I feel secure in the knowledge that this delicate affair is in such competent hands."

Obi Wan bowed again. Flattery was no salve to his conscience, nor did it engender trust. "It is my honor to serve the Republic," he said.

He dearly hoped that was true.

* * *

><p>"Ah, my dear boy!" Palpatine greeted his visitor with an avuncular smile.<p>

"Chancellor." Anakin bowed, a bit stiffly, keeping weight off his left knee.

"It is a pleasure to see you, Anakin, I must say. I've read the reports from Pylas Minor and Thermia, and there are no words to express my gratitude to you. I shudder to think what a disaster those campaigns might have been without your…creativity."

He shrugged off the compliment, limped to the broad panoramic window and enjoyed the peerless view of Courscant's metropolitan sprawl. If he strained, he could see the balcony of Padme's apartment in its distant highrise; if he concentrated, he could still smell the silpa spice perfume upon her ivory skin, her silken mahogany tresses.

"I do hope they've granted you a bit of leave, in light of your unfortunate injury," Palpatine murmured sympathetically. "It sometimes seems that the Council drives you too hard, my young friend."

Ha. He schooled his expression, although he had his back turned. "On the contrary," he said tightly. "They don't seem to trust me with anything important."

Palpatine's soft noise of concern held a world of meaning. "It pains me to hear that, Anakin."

He knew he should keep his mouth shut…but the Chancellor was his friend and mentor. He never lied to Anakin, never judged and condemned him, never kept secrets or manipulated him for his own purposes. Unlike his so-called master and the Council. He released a breath of bitter laughter. "They've sent Obi Wan on another undercover mission," he blurted. "Alone."

"Alas." Palpatines' sigh rustled like mournful leaves. "And such a short time ago, you were the golden team. How time changes all things. I do hope…well, never mind."

He spun round. "What? Do you know something about the mission?"

"I?" Now the Chancellor's face twisted for a moment with regret. "I fear the Council does not always deal with me in a completely open manner, Anakin. I do understand how you feel. They really don't know who their friends are, do they?" he paused, came to stand beside the young Jedi. "I was just wondering why you were so deliberately left out. I do hope it isn's because the operation is... ethically questionable."

"What do you mean?" Unease trickled in his veins.

The Chancellor clasped his hands together. "War forces difficult decisions upon all of us - yes, even the Jedi."

Anakin shifted, scowled out the window again. Obi Wan would never do anything in violation of basic moral principles...would he? Or would he? What about Hardeen? He had been involved in a jailbreak during his tenure as the infamous bounty hunter. A jailbreak which had left a swath of bodies in its wake. How many of those deaths had been Obi Wan's doing? What other atrocities had he committed under the alias of Hardeen, to maintain his adopted persona, to gain credibility? War had changed them all.

"I summoned you here to ask a persoanl favor," Palpatine continued. "A task I fear I cannot entrust to the Council."

That had his attention.

"The Senate is about to sign a very important agreement with a fabulously wealthy businessman from the Mid Rim territories - one Hojo Lenn by name. Lenn has contracted for military protection of his holdings, in exchange for a staggering contribution to the war effort in the form of ready cash. His liquid assets would be of great use to us...as you know, the Republic is hard pressed to keep up with the material benefits conferred by Dooku's limitless coffers."

"What does this have to do with me?" the young Jedi asked, cautiously.

"Well." Palpatine strolled acoss the room again, his sumptuous robes of office whispering against the carpet, "I shoud like you to look into these holdings of Lenn's. I should like to rest assured that the Republic is not accepting blood money or other ill-gotten profits. In our eagerness to accept Lenn's offer of financial support for the military, there is a chance that we might compromise our very principles. And that would be a tragedy indeed."

That was why Anakin so admired the Chancellor. He alone stood firm amidst the seething tides of war. He alone would not sacrifice principles to expediency.

"You want me to check out his property and business investments and report back to you - privately."

"Yes. I know you are still healing, of course, but perhaps that will work to our advantage? You are not expecting to be deployed again in the next week?"

"You can count on me." Yes, he could do that. He needed something to do, anyway. Idleness did not suit him.

"I trust you implicitly, my dear boy."

And Anakin knew that was true. Palpatine truted him without condition. "It is my honor to serve you, Chancellor."


	3. Chapter 3

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

Tera Sinube's tail swept over the smooth inlaid marble with a subtly mesmerizing rhythm. The aging Jedi master leaned heavily on his tall cane as he shuffled his way along the Archives stacks, and found an empty research station. "Ah, here we are, here we are," he muttered, painstakingly settling his aching joints in the single chair.

Obi Wan knew better than to offer assistance. He waited patiently as the elderly Cosian coughed and muttered and called the database into life, his knobbled fingers dancing over the touch-pad with a deftness born of long practice.

"Now," Master Sinube rasped. "I don't know what the Council is thinking, sending a green Padawan like you down into the underlevels."

The younger Jedi his smile behind one hand, stroking his chin out of habit. "I sit on the Council now, Master Sinube, did you know?"

The Cosian Jedi craned his head round and peered at him, golden orb-shaped eyes wide with surprise. "Eh? Oh! Stars above….yes, yes, that's right now isn't it?" He broke into a long, self-deprecating chuckle. "It all blends together, Master Kenobi, it does indeed. Time….the older you get, the more you will come to realize that it is nothing but an illusion." His ridged brows quirked into an amused line. "You know I volunteered for this assignment myself when they told me."

"Yes, master, I know; it was I who contacted you, remember?"

Tera Sinube snorted and turned back to the datapad. "Master Yoda seems to think I'm too senile for active missions. What do you think of that, eh?"

"It _is_ a bit ironic, I must admit."

"Yes!" the Cosian agreed, his reedy, fluting voice attracting the pointed stares of a few other Jedi trying to study in the hushed main library hall. "But it's also true," he grunted, wistfully. "I can't keep my mind on anything but the Force, not for long. What were we talking about?"

"My mission, master. I need to know as much as you can tell me about Hojo Lenn, and his contacts. How do I ingratiate myself with him? Does he have a weakness or a favorite obsession? What are his customary haunts?" Master Sinube was the Order's foremost expert on the seedy enclaves and criminal organizations of Coruscant's Underlevels.

The Cosian waved an impatient hand at him. "Yes, yes, I remember that," he muttered. "Lenn controls a huge drug empire, mainly spice, but he's been breaking into the deathstick market lately, subcontracting with offworld manufacturers and distributors. He lives in a palatial penthouse suite in the Beltuu district here on Corucant- not too far away. If you want to get in close, you'll have to indulge in his favorite pastime."

"Which is?"

Tera Sinube's beak-shaped mouth pursed into a disapproving pucker. "Hallucinogens."

"Ah." Obi Wan straightened and released a long calming breath. Maybe _he_ was getting too old for this sort of thing, too. "I see."

The Cosian shrugged. "You can fake it, to a certain extent. But I hope you are more than competent at purging your system. If you really want to go undercover in that crowd, you're going to have to participate in drug abuse. It's their version of an initiation ceremony."

"Lovely." Still, he was fairly certain he could handle the ill effects – if he were careful and stayed centered in the Force. Sacrifices had to be made. His treacherous memory flickered back to that one occasion, in Qui Gon's company, on – but no. He would rather not think about that.

"Now," the elderly Jedi continued brightly. "If you want to get in with the elite crowd quickly, I recommend happy hour at the Outlander tonight. Lenn never misses one of Yarbel Bassho's performances, and he's playing this evening. A good number of his cronies and bodyguards will be there, too, mixing in the crowd. You'll want to make contact with one of them – don't approach Lenn directly."

A series of mugshots flashed across the datascreen- known and suspected associates of the infamous drug lord. Obi Wan leaned forward, carefully memorizing the long parade of multi-species faces. "But you don't know who among these is on planet at present?"

"Alas, no. However," the Cosian chuckled, a wheezing shudder of amusement deep in his long throat, "Since Lenn always has three or four concubines in tow, you shouldn't have any trouble attracting the right kind of attention."

"Master Sinube."

Senility- or the convenient affectation of the same – seemed to erode the foundations of tact. Tera Sinube pointed one long, gnarled finger at him. "I may not be human, but I can see that Hojo Lenn is an ugly slob. His retinue will certainly be looking for pleasant distractions. If you are wise, you'll use that fact to your advantage."

Obi Wan stifled a groan. He already hated this mission. "I'll remember that advice," he said flatly.

"Now." The ancient master pushed himself up, with painful slowness, and seized his cane. "Let's get down to the quartermaster and see about your clothes. Jedi tunics won't get you far in the underlevels." He led the way out, ambling along the sun-drenched floor at a determined crawl, cane tapping emphatically with each step. Obi Wan strolled slowly along beside him. "And let me do all the choosing. You don't have the proper sense of style."

As they left the Archives and made their way –slowly- through the Temple's halls, Obi Wan wondered what other essential skills he was lacking, and whether he would be able to improvise effectively. This assignment could not possibly be less appealing, his feelings about it more ambivalent. For a moment, he entertained a dark suspicion that the Chancellor had somehow maneuvered him into it out of inexplicable spite …but such emotional reactions were nothing but psychic dross. The Republic needed Lenn alive, and so he needed to do this. That's all there was to it.

And when he was old and white-haired and forgetful, like Tera Sinube, this mission, this war, everything he had done and been forced to do, would blur into the illusion of passing time. He could look forward to that, he supposed. They continued on their way, in silence.

* * *

><p>"Meditative retreat?" Master Windu repeated, his brows rising in surprise. "That's an unusual request for you…but you have certainly earned it. I don't see why not, so long as you continue to follow the healer's instructions."<p>

Anakin nodded. "Thank you, Master Windu. I'll be back within a standard week."

The tall Korun Jedi continued to study him speculatively, as though unsure what to make of this sudden manifestation of new maturity in his younger associate. Anakin met his gaze levelly, shielding his thoughts, emotions, intentions, doubts, desires, and anger behind a fortress woven of the Force itself.

It seemed to work. And it was somehow satisfying to think that this skill which Obi Wan had spent so many painstaking years teaching him was now useful in deceiving Mace Windu. Long gone were the days when, as Yoda had so bluntly told him the first time he stood before the Council as a terrified nine year old, that the Council could "see right through" him. Nobody could see through Anakin Skywalker now, not even the Force itself. He was the Chosen One, and the unknown one. He did not look into his own interiority much himself, for strange shadows dwelt there, cast by weird flames of longing and hurt.

"You had better take military transport," Mace said at last. "I do not think it would be advisable for you to travel by any other means. You're too high profile."

He hadn't thought of that. Grudgingly, he admitted that Mace's insight served him well, and that the senior Councillor's suspicious nature might be a good thing in time of war.

"Yes, master – I'll make the arrangements discreetly."

Mace looked as though he doubted Anakin could do _anything_ discreetly, but he refrained from comment.

"Report back to the Council when you return, " the tall master ordered brusquely. "By that time, I am sure there will be much to be accomplished."

"Of course." He bowed, black cloak sweeping the floor before him. In a moment, he was alone again.

That had been too easy. And arranging transport for his expedition to the Mid Rim would be even easier. Captain Rex, the ever faithful and reliable commander of the 501st legion, would hook his admired and respected General up with the next troop transport shipping out of Coruscant. And Anakin had enough weight – enough intimidating reputation – in the Grand Army to guarantee him swift and silent compliance in any other request he might make. A few hopscotch style transfers from transport to transport, and he would be at his destination, without anyone really taking note.

He caught an aircar heading to the barracks and shipyards which sprawled over the greater part of Coruscant's once-disused industrial sectors. War had brought new life to the abandoned stretches of duracrete, imbued the rotting corpses of the city's earlier days with a grisly undead existence as a staging area for the galaxy-wide war.

The cool air whipped at his face and hair as the pilot threaded the craft through latticed air traffic lanes, far too slowly for Anakin's liking. He felt a momentary pang of guilt for having abandoned his Padawan to the dreary routine of the Temple for this upcoming stretch of days …but then he reflected that although Ahsoka Tano shared his restless temperament and ferocious spirit, she was still infinitely different. As close as they had grown in such a short time, she still stood on the opposite side of an abyss- that which separated Anakin from all the other Jedi. She had been Temple-raised, bred and reared and nurtured and taught in that singular sanctuary since the days of her earliest memory. To her, the Temple was _home. _To him, home was a woman – either his mother, or more recently, his wife. Home was not a place. It was certainly not the Order. It was not even the Force itself, whatever lecture to the contrary Obi Wan might offer on the subject.

Ahsoka did not know what it felt like to be a stranger in a strange land. She _liked_ the quiet and the serenity of the Temple, the sense of aloneness even within community, the perpetual hushed atmosphere of interiority. To be _home_ in the Temple was to be inward, rooted, deepened. He did not trust those dimensions of himself. Action was much, much safer. And the deadlier the better. Mortal peril was a sure protection against self-knowledge.

Hopefully this little investigation would offer some mortal peril along the way. With a twisted smile, he chuckled at his own dark desire. The war and the madness it brought: would they ever really leave his soul?

The aircar settled against a hover platform near the military security checkpoint, and he disembarked. There, overlooking the dull expanse of the Republic's war machine, he realized that it was the other way around: it was his soul that would never leave the war behind, for here….in his darkest moments…..he found his home.

Pulling the cowl of his black cloak over his head, he strode forward across the smooth deck of the platform. He had work to do.

* * *

><p>The sun had set; twilight's dingy mantle had been discarded in favor of more glittering apparel; the city was now decked out in the finery of neon signs and flashing holo-boards. The roar and hum of traffic was now accented with the raucous noise and drifting music of Coruscant's night life. The inevitable could not be delayed any longer – he must make the plunge into seediness and filth, into the utter dregs of life's overflowing cup.<p>

Obi Wan sighed softly and climbed over the side of the battered but fashionable speeder he had used to come this far. The Outlander Club, he was sorry to say, was familiar enough to him. He headed down the lower level pedestrian arcade, senses extended into the plenum, a small part of his mind annoyed by the feel of his new attire. He had wisely permitted Tera Sinube to select garments which would blend in seamlessly with his new environment and project the correct degree of rakish disregard for law and propriety. But he, for his part, would prefer rather _looser-_ fitting trousers and a shirt which actually closed properly over his chest and did not slide against his skin with such an oily, silken texture. At least the tyrannical elderly Cosian had permitted him to add a short vest to the outfit, on the grounds that he needed a place to conceal his 'saber; but the suggestion had backfired in some degree, ultimately landing him with a completely uncivilized blaster which slapped uncomfortably in its heavy holster against his thigh with every step he took. Even the boots, though correctly sized, were not to his taste. The only thing he had been permitted to keep of his own was his _face._ And for that he was indeed grateful. One learned to be thankful for small blessings in times such as these.

He reached the doors to the Club, where he was accosted by a hulking bouncer of indeterminate species and gender. "I –D," this person demanded, holding out a hand for the required idenitchip.

"You don't need mine," he grumbled, with a subtle hand motion.

"I don't need yours," the burly individual grunted in reply, and jerked his horned head toward the open doors.

The reek of bacci smoke and other more potent inhalants was a slap in the face; the Outlander's dim lighting created weird floating illlusions in the coiling tendrils of blue and white and pink. On one end of the huge first floor, sports holos blared from the ceiling. A dance floor with performers' stage graced the central area, and down a short step to the left the main bar was situated. The jostle of bodies and the titter of conversation smeared into a blurry incoherence in the Force.

He drifted toward the bar, searching through the crowded rooms of the Club without using his eyes. Lenn was here, somewhere, but finding him in this concentrated froth of villainy and vice was like looking for a needle in a…well, in a pile of needles.

"What's yer poison?" the barkeep drawled.

"Comet-tail, no ice," he decided. It was safe enough for a human metabolism, and matched his saber's blade in color, which secretly amused him. The glass was perfunctorily slammed down in front of him, and he slid a credit chit large enough to pay for several more drinks across the bar's polished surface.

A sallow-faced humanoid with tell-tale red rimmed eyes and pronounced hollows under his cheekbones sidled up to him where he perched on one of the club's narrow barstools.

"Wanna buy a deathstick?" this individual offered in a low tone.

His automatic reaction – a blunt, possibly Force-laden, refusal – had to be suppressed. He was one of these people now. He couldn't afford to forget that. "How do I know those aren't tainted?" he demanded, keeping his eyes facing indifferently forward.

"They're pure! These are from the best supplier," the dealer whined.

"Really?" He took a cautious sip of the Comet-tail, feeling the sticky-sweet liqueur burn its way down his throat. "How do I know you're not a liar?"

The nervous pusher gripped the edge of the bar. "These are from Lenn, all right? I'm no liar. You want one or not?"

Obi Wan placed his glass down deliberately. "I don't buy from liars."

"I'm not a liar!" the unfortunate humanoid shouted at him, earning a disapproving glower from the bartender. He shoved his wares back inside a pocket and curled his hands into angry fists. "You want me to prove it to ya, huh?" He took a swing, which missed its mark, and then found himself pinned face-first against the bartop by the scruff of his neck. "Heeshhh! Leshhhmeee goooshhh yousssh chchchcsssssskshha.." he slurred awkwardly into the greasy permaglass.

"Is there a problem?" another voice inquired from behind them.

Obi Wan released the would be deathstick vendor and turned to regard the newcomer. A thin, almond-eyed humanoid with silverfish skin and severe black hair tied behind her head, she pushed the stumbling dealer out of her way and slipped onto the adjacent stool. "I haven't seen you here before," she purred, dark eyes making a slow appraisal of him from head to foot and then back again. "Looks like my evening just got a lot more interesting." She seized his half-finished drink and downed its remainder in one long go.

The Force eddied and swirled around her, like the mirage rising off super-heated pavement. Interesting, indeed. "He's not a liar, by the way," she continued. "That stuff does come form the best warehouse."

"So you say," he observed, feigning indifference. There was something _acutely_ off-kilter about her Force presence…he couldn't quite place it, but he felt as though he should recognize it at once, especially in this setting…

"You calling me a liar, too?' she smiled, scooting closer. "He's legit – I've seen him around Lenn's place."

Ah. Progress. "You work for Lenn?" he inquired, registering faint interest.

"Yeah," she answered, one hand reaching down –

He snapped his own hand over the blaster before she could attempt anything imprudent and fixed her with a steely glare. To his chagrin, the silver-complected woman was merely amused by the sharp warning. "Oh, _chooba- buki, _you aren't nearly drunk enough yet," she laughed, signaling the barkeep to bring two more Comet-tails. "Let's fix that right away."

The Force shimmered about her like a reflection trembling in water. She was somehow _not right, _and she worked for Lenn. This was his lead, then. The key to Lenn's inner circle. "That's…why I'm here," he improvised, with a tiny grimace.

It was true…from a certain point of view.


	4. Chapter 4

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

Anakin avoided the bridge; Admiral Vassilus, a stolid and respectable, newly promoted commander within the ranks of the Republic Navy, had little to offer by way of conversation; moreover, he had only grudgingly consented to transport the unannounced passenger as far as his next fleet rendezvous because he was clearly unsure whether his new prerogatives included the power to refuse a Jedi request. Had it been Yularen, who never failed to remind the Generals of the Grand Army that he outranked them on board his own ship, the story might have been different. There might have been a scene, and a dry remark to the effect that the Republic's battle fleet was not a taxi service.

It didn't matter. Anakin preferred the company of the clone troopers anyway. Standing in a corner of the mess hall, listening to the 439th and 466th legions' mealtime chatter, he felt oddly at home. Beneath their garishly dyed and decoratively shaved and tattooed heads, the clones shared a grim and brutal honesty. Born to fight and die early, they didn't prettify what glimpse of life they were granted. They didn't have _time_ to indulge in deception, of self or others. With a clone, what you saw was what you got. They were the least _two-faced_ human beings Anakin had ever met….in every sense. All million some odd of them had the same exact visage, after all.

"Ah..hope to hell we don't end up deployed on that new protection gig out in the Mid Rim," one of the men seated nearby observed.

"Yeah, kriff that," one of his companions agreed, munching on the bland shipboard rations spattered gloppily in his tray. "Babysittin' some drug lord's spice mines. Thought this was a vapin' war, not corporate security."

His near neighbor chuckled darkly. "Yeah, corporate prob'ly pays better." He stuck a warning finger out at the disgruntled trooper. "But you better keep yer trap shut if that's the orders we get. Nobody in this squadron is goin' insubordinate on my watch. You try it an' you'll wish you were in those spice mines."

"Relax, Sarge, I'm just sayin'," the complainer muttered, moodily jamming his utensil into his own shapeless pile of food.

Anakin snorted. These men weren't the enthusiastic hotheads who comprised the greater part of his own 501st. Leadership was everything, he mused. And not only in the Army. What would the republic be without Palpatine at its head? Would it even exist at all, or would it have long ago crumbled beneath the weight of its own corruption and Dooku's predations? For that matter, what would the Jedi Order be without the Council, or the Council without Yoda…or Mace Windu? In the final analysis, most the problems in the galaxy, both small and large, stemmed from the wrong people being in charge. If the right leadership could be established, then peace and justice would follow like a tame gorshakk on a string. And if you thought about it too long, if you looked at the implications that everyone else ignored, democracy was a regime designed specifically and cunningly to keep the right people from ever gaining power and influence. In the name of common liberty, it ate at the foundations of _order._

Salvation would come from power and order, not turmoil and compromise. Isn't that what the Jedi had taught him, too? A Jedi draws his strength form the Force – through singular focus. A Jedi keeps his soul in strict, disciplined _order._ He does not listen to the jumbled voices of emotion, passion, desire, longing, fear, doubt, memory. Why did the Jedi serve a political system that so starkly contrasted with their own personal ideals and Code? It was a study in contradiction, in existential hypocrisy.

Someday, he – Anakin, the Chosen One – was going to _make_ people be good. Padme could call it a tyranny if she wished. There were those who called love a tyranny also – and how deluded were they?

None of the troops here knew him well enough to feel comfortable in his presence; soon enough, his somber and shadowed figure drew attention, and an unwonted hush fell over the boisterous crew. He drew his hood over his face and left. These clones might not want anything to do with Lenn's spice mine holdings – but he was more than interested. And when he reported back to the Chacellor, then perhaps, just perhaps, the Republic would get a taste of what real leadership could effect.

A wise ruler and a strong right hand… that's what the galaxy needed, after all.

* * *

><p>Six double Comet-tails later – the majority of which Obi Wan managed to convince his rather forward companion to consume herself – and the silver-skinned woman finally seemed to judge that he was sufficiently inebriated to meet her standards. Her own unsteady gait and salacious demeanor openly declared her own intoxification; but in this place, nobody seemed to notice or mind. He allowed her to draw him through the crowds to a back table in a sequestered private alcove near the musicians' stage. Performers toting grotesquely shaped gourd-based instruments arranged the audio enhancers and lights to their liking while a hirsute singer with prominent cranial horns barked terse orders.<p>

"So," the dark haired woman said," seating herself on the table's edge and arching backward suggestively. "Let's make the proper introductions. I go by Shree Uun hereabouts. You?"

"Ben," he supplied.

"Ben what?"

"Just Ben." He focused on burning away the lingering and unwelcome effects of alcohol, breathing deep to allow the Force to flood through him, beneath the onslaught of light and sounds and stinking smoke. The world appeared both in and out of focus; a blurred and strangely enticing sensory veil overlaid on a bright and luminous etching in the numinous realm. He perceived this strange individual's duplicity as clearly as though it were written in large aurebesh script before him, while at the same time he felt a certain piqued curiosity about her intentions. Friend or foe? Potential ally, or useful tool? He contemplated the possibilities detachedly as she walked the fingers of one pale hand down his chest and toward his navel.

He stepped back, to afford himself a bit of personal space. "Won't your employer be unhappy to discover you …ah… subcontracting?" he inquired.

Her thin brows rose. "I don't work for Lenn in _that_ capacity," she retorted sharply. "I'm in the protection business."

"I see." Unusual, to hire a female assassin for personal bodyguard duties - but not unheard of. The Force still shimmered uneasily about her, as though she did not quite occupy her own space. And there was undoubtedly more here than met the eye.

"Actually," she continued, leaning forward again, "A little subcontracting is exactly what I had in mind. I could use some help on this job. Lenn's signing an important agreement with the government stiff-asses in a few days. Someone might try to hit him before he can do it – might be trouble. What's your line of work?"

He shrugged evasively. "I've done protection before," he said.

"What else?" she demanded.

"Some soldiering, piloting, sabotage, smuggling, that sort of thing," he replied, truthfully. "And I can read minds, too."

She grinned at him. "Then I don't have to tell you what I'm thinking."

Unfortunately, she did not. Still, greed could be a powerful ally, and her so-called thoughts would be classified as greed, at least by Master Chakors Seva or one of the other classical commentators on the Code. "Perhaps we can come to an arrangement," he agreed, after an appropriate hesitation. "I'm flexible about means of payment."

Shree Uun liked that answer. The Force rippled around her like hot flame… and for a moment she was strangely fractured, her presence and her appearance melding and separating, like the molten beads of a kaleidoscope. Intuition and memory met in an instantaneous conjunction of certitude.

Clawdite. Shape-shifter.

But no sooner had the realization hit than their tête-à-tête was interrupted by the arrival of a fabulously corpulent humanoid who could be no other than Hojo Lenn himself. Several TwiLek and human courtesans hung on his arms and flittered nervously in the background as the reminder of his makeshift court filed into the alcove alongside him, wedging themselves into the limited seating and calling for table service in coarse voices. Lenn himself sailed into the midst of the enclosed space like massive freighter coming in to dock, and lighted upon the central cushioned bench.

"Who's this, Uun?" he demanded, waving a pudgy hand at the newcomer.

"Ben," the Clawdite answered. "He's going to help me with security tonight."

Hojo Lenn's multiple chins waggled as he snorted dubiously. "Security- ha! He looks more like a namby-pamby holo-flick star to me."

The subject of this insult folded his arms across his chest. _Really…_

Shree Uun scowled at her employer. I'll vouch for him," she snapped. It's _my_ business who I find to subcontract for work."

Lenn's oddly squashed features rumpled into an expression of distaste. "I bet you would," he sneered. "But it's my life that's on the line, Uun." He raised two fingers in some kind of silent signal to a sour-faced Zabrak standing in the corner. A moment later, this person had launched himself at Uun's new security partner in a vicious attack. A thin blade flashed in the dim lighting.

Obi Wan stepped forward, met the aggressive lunge head on, grabbed the Zabrak's knife arm, twisted, snapped the elbow out of joint and brought his knee up into his gasping opponent's midriff. The thin blade clattered out of the attacker's slackening fingers, and his forehead hit the table with a resounding thunk as his opponent slammed him down face-first for good measure.

There was a moment of stunned silence, except for the labored groans of the stunned Zabrak now curled on the floor.

Lenn looked on the scene with calculating dispassion. "All right, you're qualified," he grudgingly admitted. "But I've never heard of you before."

"Good," Ben replied. "I'm glad I haven't left any loose ends lying about."

The musicians on the stage began to play, eliciting a round of enthusiastic applause from all present; Lenn's attention was instantly riveted by the entertainment spectacle. His retainers and flatterers settled into their seats and happily accepted drinks and food delivered by a roving droid waiter. 'Ben' found an unoccupied corner of bench in one corner, only to regret his choice to sit down a moment later, when Shree Uun sidled her way over and planted herself firmly on his lap. One silver arm snaked possessively around his neck.

"Well," she murmured, "I think we'll get on just fine. I like a little rough-housing."

None of Lenn's other companions took the least notice of her tasteless overtures. He wondered idly how many other _subcontractors_ Uun had offered jobs during her tenure as Lenn's private bodyguard. Clawdites were not known for their moderation and restraint, as a general rule. Then he wondered – with a small pang of regret at their shattered harmony – what Anakin would say, had he been here to see his former master in such uncivilized surroundings.

Another part of him didn't want to know.

"Lighten up, _chooba-buki_," Uun purred into his ear, her long fingers imperiously smoothing over the deepening crease in his forehead. "The music isn't that bad…and you have to admit the company is good."

He summoned up an insincere smile. It was going to be a very long night indeed.

* * *

><p>Anakin grinned and pushed the starfighter a bit harder. It had not been difficult to persuade the Admiral to let him take the vehicle; Vassilus obviously deemed the loss of one fighter a fair price to pay for ridding the ship of an unannounced Jedi guest. The new officers were all a bit like that; the natural command position of the Jedi seemed to sit uneasily with them, as though it didn't fit their learned and deeply engrained paradigm. The old hands accepted Jedi supervision grudgingly, true; but they <em>accepted <em>it. Anakin wasn't sure what he thought about this newest crop, and the few old school curmudgeons who seemed to cultivate the skepticism about Force-users. Take Captain Tarkin, whom he had met not so long ago…there was a troublesome character. The man was a hardened pragmatist, and worse yet: a materialist. It had been tempting to show the arrogant son of a Sith exactly _how_ real and powerful the Force was… but that would probably be against the Code.

He streaked past the outlying planets in the Meddrishi system, the gas giants and a few empty rocks floating in elliptic orbits at the far reaches of the star's pull. Vassilus hadn't gone so far as to lend him an astromech, but he didn't need one. Here, inside a cockpit barely bigger than his body, he felt as though he were melded with the ship. In some ways, he could surpass a droid pilot. Even Artoo, tweaked and upgraded to his personal exacting standards, would have to work hard in a flying contest against him.

There: his first destination lay directly ahead. From this distance, he could see the glint of huge shipping freighters hovering in orbit around the equator and tropics. Particles of dust – shiping crates or tug barges – drifted between the surface and these waiting transports. Looked like business was booming. A Republic cruiser was already stationed just outside the system, monitoring the known hyperlanes in this sector; once Lenn signed his agreement with the Senate, more extensive protection would be provided.

For now, however, nobody noticed or challenged the lonely starfighter plunging down into the upper atmosphere and diving through thick cloud cover to skim across the dull oceans below. He followed a straight course until he sighted land, and then headed along the near coastline, steadily decreasing altitude and speed. There didn't appear to be any significant settlements at all…at least above ground. He headed inland, crossed a low sweep of mountains which divided high barren plains form the lower coastal region, and dropped again, until he was flying low enough to scan the surface with his naked eye.

And then he saw the first jagged gaps in the planet's surface – the pimples thrusting out of the hard earth, oozing a detritus of waste and discarded minerals. Generator stations were situated on their periphery – huge blocks of duracrete, industrial sized power cores capable of powering a small city each. He descended further. Where was all that power being diverted? The rim of the nearest hole was just ahead; gravsleds trickled in and out of its dark maw, and power lines encased in massive durasteel tubing extended into the open pit. As he skimmed across the opening, he caught a glimpse of bottomless depths, countless tiers of mining platforms and lighting banks, descending into the planet's bowels n rank upon rank. The Force darkened about it; and he felt the plunging sensation of despair and terror clawing in his own belly.

These were spice mines, places often described as living incarnations of the legendary nine hells. Here, one of the galaxy's most valuable commodities was wrested from its reluctant subterranean birthplace. This one mine alone might produce enough wealth to keep a Hutt lord in style for his entire natural life span. And Hojo Lenn owned a whole world of them. No wonder he wanted protection, and was willing to pay a staggering sum to procure it. Even handing a third of his profits over to the Republic would be better than suffering the loss of his entire operation at the hands of a Separatist raid.

Anakin soared high into the purple sky again, and tried counting the dark wounds in the planet's surface – the scars left by active or abandoned mines. They spread to the current horizon, pox marks on the smooth skin of the dust plains. His mind reeled at the immensity of the operation; his gut clenched at the thought of its orgin.

Spice was not strictly illegal on all Republic systems; while often smuggled or sold on the black market, it also made appearances in courts and elite markets all over the known galaxy. The galactic legislature soothed its own conscience by imposing ridiculous taxes on tariffs on the highly desirable narcotic, increasing the criminal activity engendered by its tacit approval. It was one of the grey zones in the complicated legal system which united ten thousand disparate systems under one federal rule. Nobody _liked_ the spice trade, or the crime it inevitably festered wherever it went; and yet nobody seemed willing to push a universal ban. The Galactic Senate chose to simply…look the other way.

Until now, when one of the richest spice lords in the Mid Rim and the Core had offered them a cut of the profits. That had their attention, sure enough. With diffculty, he banished the irksome memory of Obi Wan's many lectures on the "economics of politics."

He made a decision and dove down again, skirting the foothills and heading for the first mine he had seen. The Chancellor wanted him to _investigate._ And that's what he would do. It was time to have a closer look at Lenn's investments. Anakin, at least, would not look the other way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

Hojo Lenn's private penthouse was situated atop one of Corusacnt's most sought-after residential towers. When the noisy and intoxicated crowd finally made their way back to this luxurious domicile at the third hour past midnight, a gleaming assemblage of liveried droids took the staggering and mumbling members of the household well in hand, ushering some of them into private rooms to one side, others into the spacious 'fresher array, still others onto the sumptuous couches and cushioned furnishings occupying the vast central room, one topped by a glittering dome transparent to the traffic-fretted heavens.

Shree Uun by this time was barely able to stand on her own; her weight was an awkward impediment to Obi Wan's movements as he tried to maneuver his way through the doorframe in the wake of Lenn's identical twin Twi'Lek concubines. Only the crime lord himself seemed unaffected by the evening's excesses. He waved a magnanimous hand at his apartment's interior. "Make yourselves at home," he declared in a stentorian tone. "You –Unn. I'm retiring to my private chambers."

The Clawdite was sufficiently coherent to acknowledge the statement with a brusque nod. "Ben and I have security covered," she slurred.

"I pay you too much," her corpulent employer remarked, before lumbering off toward a pair of burnished double doors at the suite's far end.

"Ben," the silver-skinned woman – or the person who appeared under such a guise at present – breathed huskily down his neck. "You are the _only_ man ever to drink me under the table. I think you cheated."

He looked about for an unoccupied piece of furniture on which to deposit his over-attentive companion, but not a scrap of cushion anywhere appeared to be available. "Perhaps I did," he admitted, doggedly steering her unsteady steps toward a smaller alcove set to one side. "Do you expect trouble tonight?" It was clear that only _one_ of them was in any condition to serve as bodyguard to Lenn.

"I hope so," the shapeshifter smiled, one hand escaping his grip and wandering uninvited over whatever parts of him she could reach. It wasn't his fault if he dropped her rather unceremoniously upon the plush bed in the small room's center.

"I'll keep watch," he decided. "You need to sleep."

But Shree Uun was made of hardier stuff than one might imagine. Her drunken grin widened as she lashed out with her feet, deftly catching him behind the knee and bringing him down on top of her. He twisted out of her feeble attempt to pin him in a headlock and seized her wrists. "That's enough," he warned.

She chuckled throatily. "You're such a bossy priss, _ma booki,_" she smiled. "They shouldn't let bastards like you be so good-looking."

_Oh, in the name of_… "You want to go to sleep right now," he commanded, slamming against her half-stupefied mind with the Force. She immediately went limp, eyes rolling back into her head. The compulsion so shattered her concentration that for a moment her exotic humanoid face melted back into murky reptilian features, the true mien of the Clawdite beneath the affected illusion.

He let the door slide shut softly behind him as he returned to the main lounge area. Here, Lenn's friends and followers sprawled inelegantly upon every piece of furniture and the floor. Snores and grunts textured the nighttime silence; the serving droids had whirred away into their alcoves to await the next crisis. The doors to Lenn's private boudoir remained firmly sealed.

He found a patch of unoccupied carpet directly beneath the ornamental skylight, a bare stretch of synth-silk pile where the city's glow filtered through the filigreed panes overhead and splashed down in a muted geometry of light. Obi Wan knelt in meditation posture, closed his eyes. Here, among two or three dozen besotted villains, he kept a traditional Jedi vigil. If there was to be danger tonight, he would sense it before it arrived.

The hours crept on toward morning, and the assorted occupants of Lenn's posh apartment remained situated in motionless vignette: a sea of limp and listless bodies, limbs akimbo, mouths gaping open in drunken sleep – and the lone island kneeling in their midst, folded quietly in contemplation of the Force. To the assassin probe hovering tentatively above the domed skylight, the life forms inside gave every indication of being vulnerable and off-guard. Its operating parameters noted the absence of a conscious, active sentry and initiated an attack sequence.

The moment the droid's fusion cutter had carved a small circular opening in the permaglass overhead, Obi Wan snapped instantly form deep contemplation to acute battle awareness. The Force twisted with precise warning: danger above. He felt no intention, no thought at all behind the threat, and concluded immediately that the intruder was a droid. His right hand, resting loosely against his thigh, moved imperceptibly to one side, seeking his saber hilt, before he registered that the weapon did not occupy its customary place and should not be used here save in the worst extremity.

The glass overhead softly pinged as the droid removed the panel and descended through the skylight, sensor array sweeping indifferently over the sleeping denizens of the room, its thin red beam settling at last upon the doors to Lenn's bedroom. It hovered lower, passed along about two meters in the air, its repulsors thrumming like the purr of a hunting colwar, and headed toward the doors. Its passage did not wake a single one of Lenn's guests.

Lip curling slightly in distaste, Obi Wan closed his fingers about the unwieldy blaster Master Sinube had convinced him to carry. He loosened it from its holster, drawing it out with only the faintest whisper of sound –

-The assassin unit whirled in place and sent a bolt of plasma directly at him. He rolled backward even as it fired, sucking in a hissing breath. The carpet was blackened where the shot hit. He dove sideways to avoid the next blast, which zipped past his ear and shattered a crystalline lamp on a small table. The guests stirred fretfully. He jumped clear over the next shot, landing in a crouch and leveling the blaster. The probe zoomed upward, seeking a higher vantage point. He closed his eyes, felt rather than saw its erratic motion, pulled the trigger. One, two, three bolts penetrated the droid's carapce and sent it crashing to the floor. The fourth shot hit the decorative moulding in the ceiling and sent a cascade of plaster down on the serving droids tottering into the chaotic room, their arms jerking spasmodically in their distress.

The doors at the far end of the suite flew open, to reveal a flustered and irate Lenn clad in …absolutely nothing. The Twi'Leks dithered and wailed in the background, pulled at his arms as though to draw him back into the safety of the inner chamber.

"What's going on?" the enormous man roared.

"Assassin probe," his new security officer replied, curtly.

Lenn's eyes rested upon the mangled remnants of the droid smoking on the ruined carpet, and then flicked to the blaster in Ben's hand. "Good work," he grunted, then turned and retired. A few of the more sober guests muttered or bemoaned the mess, and the serving droids were already fussily setting to rights what damage they could.

And that was all. Apparently a bit of midnight murder was not much of a conversation piece in this milieu. With a shrug, Obi Wan fetched the droid's remains off the floor before the enthusiastic housekeepers could whisk it away to the 'cycler. With any luck, he might be able to glean some clue about its origin. Of course, after taking three high-power blaster bolts directly in the central processor, the chances of that were very slim indeed; the probe was little more than slag and scrap now.

With a small grimace, he re-holstered the weapon responsible for the ugly carnage. "So uncivilized," he muttered.

* * *

><p>Anakin crept toward the rim of the mining crater under cover of darkness. The cold wind blew grit into his eyes and magnified the generators' hum into a ululating howl, a low and wavering note of distress to match the disturbance in the Force. Automated droid patrols hummed along the edge of the massive pit; whenever one approached too close, he sent it flying in the opposite direction with a snap of one hand.<p>

And then he reached the edge. Flat on his belly, he peered down into an inverted cone, a rough-hewn bowl carved deep into the crust of the planet. Mineral strata textured the sloping sides in stark stripes of red and brown and white, dimming into blackness near the bottom. He sensed innumerable beings laboring upon the narrow scaffolding erected along the pit's walls, and yet more inside the countless tiny caves which punctuated the steep inclines.

There was little visible light. He knew from studying in the Temple, and from accounts whispered in the spacers' saloons on Tatooine when he was a boy, that exposure to light would ruin the spice, would enrage the territorial arachnids which produced the priceless substance as an excretion of their bodies, spinning it into shard-like webs, organic crystals deep in the murk below. He also knew that the spiders were deadly, the razor-sharp webs dangerous, the risk of overexposure to the spice itself immense, and the working conditions in such places worse than slavery. Kessel was an infamous penitentiary site, a place where hardened criminals from the Outer Rims were sent to die by the harsh justice systems that reigned so far out from the glalaxy's more fastidious Core. He had not been aware until now that such things existed within the bounds of the Republic he was sworn to serve.

He found a lift and threw the droid operator over the ledge, clattering into the inky abyss below. The Force overrode the control system, and he descended, his disgust deeping into wrath as the rattling cage descended. He had been an idiot not to guess at it. Especially now, with the war. Ryloth was the major supplier of _ryll _spice, and with the Twi'Lek homeworld constantly under siege, there must have been a dramatic decrease in production. Kessel was now in Separatist hands; so where else did the greedy rich of Coruscant turn to supply their addictions?

He gazed at the answer all around him. Workers crept like battered insects along the narrow walkways, emerging and disappearing into the cave openings in a steady stream, their shoulders slumped, their bodies swathed in drab mining suits. They wore helmets with inset dark-lights, carried only the most primitive of tools. There was no other way to mine spice without ruining it. The generators thrummed away, supplying power to a quiet traction system which carried the collected strands of spice-laden web back to the surface and the refineries. He saw humans, Twi-Leks, reptilians, Zabrak, Ithrorians, and countless others. The oppressed were well-represented here. How was such cheap and expendable labor kept in submission?

There were guards, overseers, droid security patrols as well. The enforcement was well-organized. Overhead and all around, the supply line carried small baskets of harvested web strands upward to the surface. There must be thousands of miners here in this one pit. He stopped the lift and peered across the dark chasm at a particular hole on the opposite side. As he watched, two tall miners emerged, carrying the body of a third between them. The Force roiled with death- and before his astonished eyes, the two shuffling miners edged their way to the scaffolding rail and dropped the body over its edge, into oblivion. Anakin did not even hear a thump.

So this was how Hojo Lenn and the army of slythmongers dependent on him for supplies made their living. This was the treasure trove the Galactic Senate was willing to protect with military might in exchange for a share of profits – and maybe even product. This was the depth to which the Republic had sunk. He had seen enough.

Shaking with nameless rage, he hit the control and began the slow ascent to the surface.

* * *

><p>The droid was, as he suspected, a complete ruin. Its parts dissected and laid out neatly before him on the low table in the room's corner, he could pronounce it dead beyond a shadow of doubt, its processors fried, its transponder melted into a useless glob. Anakin's genius might have been able to salvage some fragment of information from the probe's blasted-out corpse; but Obi Wan was left staring disconsolately at the mess. The only thing he could say with certainty was that it was <em>not <em>of any standard Separatist design; though even that proved nothing. Dooku or his associates might have contracted with a local or independent agent, one who opted for less mainstream technology. He sighed.

A silver hand settled itself against the small of his back. "Well, good morning," Shree Uun murmured, gazing at the mangled droid remains. "Lenn says you saved his life last night. Guess I'll keep you 'round after all…even though that was a dirty trick you played on me."

He swept the droid bits into a waste canister. "No trick. You fell asleep."

"I don't fall asleep just when things are getting interesting," Uun corrected him. Her hand slid lower down his spine, and then abruptly seized a handful of hard muscle below, long fingers digging in with painful enthusiasm.

He spun, placing his back to the table. "Then it must not have been very interesting."

The Clawdite gripped the edge of the table, pressing herself all together too close for comfort. " Maybe you're the one with the problem, hm?" She rolled her exotic, almond shaped eyes. "Let me guess, _ma chooba…_ you prefer blondes." Her features seemed to melt, shimmer into a haze; the Force churned, shuddered, and stilled; and Shree Uun had transformed from the stately silver-skinned woman of a moment ago into a creature with fine-drawn delicate features and a mane of silver-gold hair. She lowered almost transparent lashes at him demurely. "Better?"

"No," he decided. "And who is _that?"_

Uun lifted one pale shoulder. "Somebody I killed."

"Then it's worse," he snapped. "I have work to do."

She seized his arm roughly as he strode away. "Hey! I got you this job, remember? You're working for _me._"

"Not any more," he informed her blithely. "Your employer has just contracted with me directly, to be his personal bodyguard. I'm accompanying him to his meeting with the Senators this afternoon."

"What?" Shree Uun spun about, eyes frantic. "That's not true!"

Hojo Lenn chose this moment to emerge from his room, attired in a much more dignified and expensive manner than his last appearance. "Ben!" he called jovially. "We will depart in ten minutes. Uun, you can stay here and make sure there are no intruders in my absence."

The Clawdite fumed and sputtered. "He takes care of one droid and you promote him? I've saved your skin a dozen times, Lenn!"

The drug lord pointed a ring-bedecked finger at her. "You were asleep on the job last night," he pointed out. "I would fire you if you weren't such a fine…decoration." He paused, assessing her newly-donned persona. "You are looking lovely this morning, my dear. I could perhaps find you some _other_ work around here."

Uun's scowling reply was muttered at Lenn's retreating back.

"Come along, my boy," the latter called out. "We mustn't be late for our meeting with the esteemed members of the galactic legislature."

Ben bowed deeply to the irate Clawdite before following Hojo Lenn out the door.

"I'm not done with you, either," she snarled at him as he stepped over the threshold.


	6. Chapter 6

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6<strong>

In the shadow of the nearest generator station, a line of pathetic and desperate people waited. They stood cringing and shuddering, as a hefty foreman or manager passed down the line, distributing something into their outstretched hands as he passed. The Force tightened with desire, with trembling need.

Anakin crept closer. Food? Money? Payment, undoubtedly…but in what currency? He pressed himself against the generator's smooth, humming side and squinted through the gloom. A pair of the grateful recipients broke away form the main crowd and wandered closer, clutching the treasure between closed hands.

"Less than yesterday," one of them moaned, wiping grime off his tattooed face with a filthy sleeve. It had little effect.

"Doesn't matter," his companion snorted. "I just wanna leave this place for the night. If I don't wake up, just let me lie."

They crouched down a scant two meters away, oblivious to his presence. The first speaker held out his hand, palm upward. In the hollow of his wrinkled skin lay a tiny heap of sparkling grain. He raised the dust to his nostrils and inhaled sharply, a blunt retort like a sneeze. His head lolled back against the hard metal of the power station, and he exhaled deeply. His friend followed suit.

Anakin counted his breaths, the passing seconds….but neither man moved. He stepped forward, directly into the line of their vision. No response. He crouched down, nudged at their slack limbs, pried an eyelid open to discover a curve of bloodshot white. The Force seemed to pool and eddy, sluggish and contorted, around the slumped figures.

Spice. They were being paid in spice. And that explained their servitude – it was well known that an established spice addict could never break the habit, and would go to irrational extremities of suffering to obtain the next dose, and the next. It was also well known that such unmoderated indulgence in the stronger varieties was a sure death sentence, taking years and then decades off the user's life, gradually reducing the being to a gibbering madman even while he eked out the short remainder of his life.

It had the simplicity of true brilliance. And true evil.

How much did the Senate know? The Chancellor could not possibly know about this; Palpatine's ethics were above reproach. He would be appalled to learn of these abuses, of the way Lenn ran his mining operation. This was no cooperative mine like the _ryll_ harvesting corporations on Ryloth; this was slavery and slow murder, for the sole sake of profit, for the pleasure and idle indulgences of the rich. It was _intolerable._

He drew his cloak over his head, eyes traveling back to the man who had distributed the spice. He was disappearing into a wide grav-sled now, moving away to the next batch of workers coming off shift. Anakin's hand went to his saber hilt. The generator stations could be easily destroyed. The men responsible for keeping the miners in subjection could be cut down. They should be – they should be slaughtered like animals for what they did. The mines themselves….they could also be destroyed. A few well placed proton torpedos, or an orbital bomb, and the vile spice pits would no longer exist. His elite squadron of 501st pilots could handle the whole operation in a matter of hours. They could take Lenn down, bring him to his knees.

But he was alone here, and officially not here at all. He gritted his teeth. What would Obi Wan do in this situation? Besides _lying,_ of course. He would be patient. He would observe, assess, and then report back to the Council before engaging in rash action. A long breath out. He could do that. He released a long breath, loosened his tight grip around his weapon's hilt. His fighter was a short distance away.

He would report back to the Chancellor first. And then he would act.

* * *

><p>Hojo Lenn's meeting with the Senators from Meglon, Dervash, Pylar, and Huuk'chtu 4 took a considerable amount of time and left a stunning detritus of emptied food and drink containers in its wake. Serving droids escorted the guests back to their private speeders and air cars, leaving Lenn and his newly appointed bodyguard alone in the private alcove located at the back of an exclusive <em>jargul<em> den in the Belshuu district.

"Sit down, sit down," Lenn ordered, waving Ben out of the shadows at the back of the sumptuously appointed space, and indicating a portion of cushioned bench directly beside himself.

Obi Wan settled himself cautiously beside his new employer's massive figure.

"So…what do you think, eh?" Lenn inquired, leaning back against the soft velvet backrest and fixing his retainer with a penetrating look.

_Careful. _"I think they will make the changes you suggested," Ben offered. "They seemed eager to …ah…benefit from your generosity."

"Glitterstim addicts, every one of them," Lenn confirmed. "They'll do whatever I ask. And they have the connections to pull a majority vote in the legislature, too. This contract should be signed in two days."

Ben stirred thoughtfully. "I'm no businessman," he said. "But I don't see why you would go to all this trouble when you could land a similar arrangement with the CIS. And avoid the assassination attempts."

Lenn polished off the remainder of his last drink. "You're a clever one," he mused. "But if I sided with the Seps, the Republic might send Jedi to assassinate me."

"Jedi don't do _assassinations,_" Ben protested.

Lenn dismissed this with a noisy snort. "Bantha chisszk, they don't. Jedi are the black hand of the Republic, Ben my boy. I'd rather cross Dooku than those hopped-up religious fanatics. By signing with the Republic, I guarantee that the Chancellor's office will keep the Jedi off my back. You have to play these things like a sabaac game, my friend. Besides, democratic rule is always better for the free market. My product can reach a wider customer base here in the Core and Inner Rim."

"I see," Obi Wan replied neutrally. Lenn was an astute manipulator of others' needs, and a cynical and neutral observer of the war playing out in every corner of the galaxy. He saw; and he wondered how it had come to this. How was it that the Council, that _he,_ had agreed to surreptitiously protect this evil being in order to procure a portion of his ill-gained profits for the Republic's war effort? What kind of peace and justice did that uphold? Thank the Force that the contract would be signed in two days….at which time he could withdraw gratefully from this repulsive assignment. On the other hand, did he really want Lenn's contract to be ratified?

It wasn't his to decide, he reminded himself. He had sworn an oath of service.

"Not only are you a thinker, you know when to keep your mouth shut," Lenn chuckled genially. "I'd like to keep you around on a more permanent basis. I must say, you're the only decent thing Uun has ever dragged in. Her other diversions were all useless."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"Take it as a job offer. I'll pay you twice what Uun gets. I want you on security alert around the clock. Expenses paid, and your choice of side benefits."

"That's…a tempting offer."

"Let's drink on it, then," Lenn decided. He leaned forward and grabbed the carafe of amber fluid still sitting on the table. He filled two small glasses and then fished a tiny inlaid box out of an inner pocket. "This," he explained. "Is my best spice. I keep it for personal use only. And I'd like you to seal our little arrangement." He used a miniscule tong-like implement to transfer a pinch of glittering dust from the box into the drinks.

"What's that?" Ben asked, suspiciously, though he had a sinking suspicion he knew already.

"This," Lenn smiled, thrusting the box back into its pocket, "Is the naturally occurring base of synthetic ixetol cilena."

"Deathsticks."

"No, no – that's for the hoi polloi. This is the real thing, Ben. It makes glitterstim look like cheap colfillini beer. I only let those I _trust_ in on this secret." He shoved one of the glasses toward his new bodyguard, with an ingratiating smile, and raised the second one to his own lips. "To our new relationship."

Obi Wan took the glass of toxic brew in one hand and sniffed at it. The pungent aroma of alcohol rose from the amber liquid, but nothing else. He hesitated a moment, feeling the Force tauten in warning. The muscles across his belly crawled with apprehension, and he felt the hairs on the nape of his neck rise in alarm. But really, it was no more difficult than swallowing a vocal emulator or forcing down live quanta worms out of diplomatic necessity. The Force was a powerful ally, and he was trained.

He tipped the vile liquid down his throat.

Lenn took a small sip of his own glass and leaned back, watching him with a smirk of pleasure on his bloated features.

Nothing happened. The drink burned a raw trail down his throat and warmed his chest, a slight flush of answering warmth in his skin and a tingling sensation at his fingertips, a palpable and almost pleasant relaxation of his tense muscles, his vague apprehension…. He was still looking at Lenn, and the soft drape of decorative curtain behind him, its crimson folds falling in an elegant swag against the wall. The Force itself seemed to unwind, uncoil, its thrumming presence slowing to a soporific eddy.

That was odd.

_Focus._ Lenn was speaking, but his voice had disappeared, as though muted into the colors of the drapes, which dripped, wax-like, to pool on the table and the floor, a red and rippling pool, a basin in which Lenn's face and the interior of the Jargul den and the table and the clutter upon it were nothing but dull reflections.

He closed his eyes, but the image was not sensory. _Focus. Breathe. The Force_. He centered himself in the trickling current, the sluggish pulse of life energy around him, but to his growing alarm the Light itself seemed elusive, slippery. The center, his foundation, shifted treacherously beneath him, melted like the dripping crimson of the curtains; he felt the dark spread of warmth, like blood, erupting from his own core, where the Force should have been, where his heart should have been.

He gasped. _Not right- not good_. Scrabbling for purchase as the world melted into crimson rainfall, into a red shower of burning, scalding droplets, he held on, dangling over a bottomless pit of black while a red-and-black-assassin mocked him above, scattering agonizing sparks on him as his grip slid, loosened…

He fell into the pit. He fell far, far, down into the melting pit, into the place where colors and sounds and shapes had pooled and melded together. And the hole in his chest widened until his entire body was nothing but gaping wound, and the molten hot lava in the pit rolled in , consumed him, melted him into its own embrace.

Pain mounted until it was intolerable pleasure; bliss so piercing that he writhed with it, soundlessly screaming with the devastating ecstasy of it. _Oh Force, no…_ this wasn't right – this was wrong and dark and twisted, and he must escape. Ecstasy broke over its own horizon, a new dawn of joy spilling over the first, and then another, until each successive starburst of pleasure burned a deeper scar into him, until he was begging for it to end, to cease, to release him…Where was the Force? Where was the light, and peace? He clawed for its retreating tendrils, the smoke rising off the molten pool of hot-sharp nervous pleasure, the tiny thread of self that remained intact enough to _feel_ this torturous illusion of joy.

He had it. He held to it. _The Force. Reality. Light._

The searing, sucking pool released him, its clinging smears ripping at his soul, burning blissful shudders along his spine as he struggled out of its morass, choking him and dragging at his heavy limbs. He rose from the depths, burned alive, limp with pleasure, with boundless relief, with an unspeakable pang of loss and a terror of ever returning.

He opened his eyes. The ceiling was glowing with a soft ambience. The curtains were crimson-dyed velvet, and quite undamaged. Hojo Lenn was still sitting nearby, idly watching him. He was on his back, sprawled across the long padded bench inside a private alcove in a jargul den on Coruscant.

"Good trip?" Lenn inquired casually.

He was drenched. Blood? No….just sweat. His face was dripping, too. He hoped tears were not mixed with the rivulets of perspiration, but there was no way to know. He tried to sit up and failed. "I…ah…"

Hojo Lenn smiled blandly. "I told you that was the real deal. Now you know one of the universe's best kept secrets." He summoned two droid attendants, who unemotionally hauled the stricken bodyguard to his feet and supported him out the door as Lenn led the way back to his private air transport. "Sadly, it's instantly addictive," he added. "So you're stuck with me now."

* * *

><p>"You seem…disturbed, Anakin."<p>

The Chancellor's blue hologram considered him gravely, flickering slightly over the projection plate. Anakin hunched inside the small cockpit, a flame of outrage swathed in dark cloth.

"Chancellor," he choked out. "I've just had a good look at Lenn's spice mines. They make Kessel look like a vacation resort. It's an abomination." He proceeded to relate all that he had witnessed, sparing no detail. Palpatine had to understand – he would be able to do something, to make it right.

But the Supreme Chancellor merely shook his head sadly when the grievous recitation finally came to an end. "Ah, dear," he sighed, his shoulders drooping. "This is my worst nightmare realized. I fear we will be obliged to support and protect such practices for the sake of expediency."

"Chancellor. I could take a squadron, just twenty fighters and a special clone unit, and –"

"No,no," Palpatine interrupted him sharply. "I cannot authorize any such action, not when the Senate is on the brink of signing an accord with Lenn. Our hands are tied. Of course, I wil present your findings to the legislature tomorrow, during a special session, but …alas…There is little chance that even such scandalous revelatioins will stop the gears of conspiracy form moving forward. Such is democracy."

Anakin's mechno hand clenched spasmodically. "There must be a way to stop that agreement form going through. The Republic can't commit itself to such corruption, for the sake of money."

"Oh, I only wish that were true," Palpatine sighed again, the weight of the galaxy seeming to settle upon his weary shoulders. "When I took office all those years ago, I vowed to eliminate corruption in the Senate." He shrugged wryly. "How naïve I must have been. Short of a miracle, I fear Lenn will go through with this treaty."

"Unless Dooku manages to assassinate him in the meantime."

Palpatine's expression was grave. "It is a terrible thing to say, but one almost wishes that might happen…however, our intelligence suggests that Lenn has surrounded himself with the best security in the galaxy. I doubt any feeble Separatist attempts at killing him would succeed."

"He could be arrested," Anakin insisted. "The Jedi could do it."

"That wouldn't stop the contract going into effect. Lenn's status as a diplomatic entity extends until the Senate has ratified the new agreement."

_Kriff_ all this beaurocracy and double talk. Anakin knew exactly what needed to be done. "Somebody has to stop him," he said darkly.

"Yes, that is true, if there is to be any decency left in the galaxy," the Chancelleor replied levelly. "But there is nothing you or I can do, Anakin. I am bound by my office and you by your Jedi code. We must accept our limitations."

To the _hells_ with that. He was the Chosen One, He didn't _have_ limitations. "I understand," he gritted out. "Skywalker out."

But as he sat in the gloom of his cramped haven, watching the stars peek out overhead and the swirling dust climbing in slow columns heavenward, he formulated another thought… a dark and secret thought that would, nonetheless, restore balance to the Republic.

And that was what he was supposed to do, wasn't it?


	7. Chapter 7

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 7<strong>

He woke with a hammering headache – one fierce enough to have been spat up from the deepest Sith-hell alongside whatever vile substance had produced it. Squinting balefully at the filigree skylight of Hojo Lenn's penthouse, Obi Wan unsuccessfully tried to remember what had happened between the exclusive _jargul _den …and here. There was a significant gap, and he suspected that he had spent the majority of it unconscious. The apartment was quiet…and the sky overhead was a deep purple, dotted with moving points of light. It was late night.

"Oh, are we feeling better?" Shree Uun's voice mocked him from a corner of the room.

He levered himself upright, glared at the Clawdite woman draped across one of the largest couches in the luxurious room. "Where is Lenn?" he asked, his voice dry and grating in his parched throat.

She nodded her now platinum head in the direction of Lenn's private room. "He sent everyone away for the night. It's just you and me, _chooba-buki."_ She uncurled and came sashaying across the carpet toward him. He drew in deep steadying breaths, but the pounding headache did not lessen. The Force stirred about him slowly, thick and unresponsive. Stars…that spice was _dangerous_ stuff.

Uun seated herself beside him and seized his face between her hands, none too gently, jerking his head to the side just quickly enough to send a sharp thrill of pain stabbing down his neck. "What did he give you?" she demanded, as though interrogating a prisoner. "Glitterstim? Rhyll? What?"

He pulled free, gritting his teeth. "Ixetal cilena."

Uun hissed in a breath and then grabbed him again, a bit more gently. "That kriffing barve," she muttered. "My poor buki-nuba." She peered into his eyes and then pushed him away again. "You're dead," she declared. "Weeks or months. Nobody kicks that spice habit. He's got you screwed good and hard." She paused, wistfully. "Should have let me-"

"What do you mean?" he asked in his turn, pressing the palms of his hands against his aching temples.

"You'll need it again. And again. And Lenn's the only one who'll supply you, believe me. You're his slave until you drop in your tracks." She stood bitterly and stalked across the sumptuous apartment, then pivoted angrily and returned to stand in front of him. "I've seen it before. That's his way."

"I see," he muttered. That was problematic. He was going to have to find a way out of this new situation he had landed himself in. But there was something about Uun's emotional state that triggered a further question. "You knew somebody else who suffered the same fate, didn't you?"

"We're not that up close and personal, remember?" she flung back at him bitterly. Then she relented and sat down again, stroking a soft hand down his face and along one arm. "Well, yes. I knew …. someone."

"Who?" He knew intuitively that this was the key to unlocking the secret of Shree Uun, and her position as Lenn's security officer.

"Let's not talk about it," she decided abruptly.

He watched her retreat to a cabinet against the opposite wall, and rummage inside its recessed shelves. So Lenn used spice as a means of subjection. Possibly even the Senators who had drafted the original contract with him were such victims….and if so, then the very nature of this dubious business arrangement with the Republic was called into serious question. He tried to release some of the pain into the Force. Think. Breathe. Was there a way to stop Lenn signing that agreement? To scare him off? The grim truth was that the Senate was so slow-moving and internally corrupt that the contract would likely carry through no matter what was revealed about Lenn himself, or his spice dealings. Having agreed to a moral compromise, the lawmakers would doubtless be willing to widen the terms of that compromise a little further. In such times as these, war and the money to fund it trumped every other consideration. He felt sick.

"Here." Uun was shaking a glass of something liquid under his nose. "It'll help."

He waved it away. More toxins were the last thing he needed.

The Clawdite placed one hand on her ample hips. "It's Corellian brandy, mixed with about a quarter of a deathstick. You need it, don't you get that? This is a low-dose, synthetic version of what he gave you – not as good, not as strong. Just enough to stave off withdrawal. Your other option is to suffer until Lenn gives you another hit."

He groaned. He had a job to do here, now: he was still officially commissioned to protect Lenn from assassination attempts, his own growing misgivings notwithstanding. "Very well – give me the blasted thing." He downed the liquid in one go. It tasted quite vile.

But it did seem to alleviate the inexplicable pain, the subliminal itch of longing for something else, something more potent… He closed his eyes, reached into the Force again. Slothfully, it filtered back into his grasp, not complete, not as fleet and bright as it should be – but there. He wrapped its soothing if frayed threads about himself, shamelessly craving their comfort. Like a youngling clutching some blanket or plaything, he sunk into a light trance, welcoming the relief, even if it was tinted with fever, with the first stirrings of new delirium.

"That's right," Uun soothed. "You go back to sleep. I'll take the next watch."

He nodded dimly, too absorbed in burning away what ill effects he could, in garnering new strength form the Force, to care much about her fickle attentions. Eventually, she stopped pawing and stroking at him and wandered off to mind her own business. He also kept watch, invisibly, from a fragile sanctuary deep within the Force.

Another day and night… he could manage, somehow. He still had a job to do.

* * *

><p>The endless permutations of hyperspace seemed to taunt him. <em>Foolish, foolish, foolish, <em>the radiant smears seemed to chant as they slid past the cockpit's transparent canopy. Anakin glowered back, alone in the tiny ship, unable to pace or stretch or even shift position. Such fighters were not the most comfortable means of traversing long distances; most were not even fitted with supra-light drives. But the Republic Navy had learned early in the war that fighters without hyperdrive capacity were easily stranded and vulnerable, and had wisely opted to provide some of the fleet's more powerful models with the capacity to initiate a jump in case of emergency, or for stealth operations that had to be launched from distant locales. Anakin heartily appreciated the wisdom of this design improvement ; however, that didn't mean it made the experience of being cooped up in a miniscule cockpit for twelve hours any more pleasant.

He reverted just shy of the Inner Rim. He was getting ahead of himself again, running headlong into something he might regret later. He needed to hear a calm voice reasoning him away from the precipice on which he stood crouched to spring; he needed to hear a wry and critical appraisal of his own perspective. He feared his own daring, his own audacity. He felt…imbalanced. He needed Obi Wan.

The transmission to the Council took forever. Wartime security meant that even alpha priority signals had to be routed through scrambler and encryption circuits. When he did receive an answer, it was Mace Windu whose shimmering form appeared over the tiny projector plate.

"Skywalker," the tall Korun Jedi greeted him in his habitually brusque manner. "I take it you are finished with your retreat?"

"I'm on my way home," he replied. "I ..uh…was hoping to contact Master Obi Wan. I need to speak with him. Urgently."

Mace Windu's dark face conveyed a flicker of concern, and then disapproval. "He's not available. His mission is too sensitive to risk any communication."

Anakin scowled. Yeah, right. "I _need_ to speak to him. I need his advice. On a personal matter."

But petulance was never a smart tactic when dealing with Master Windu. "If you require counsel, Skywalker, then I suggest you return to the Temple as soon as possible. We'll find somebody for you to speak with. Yoda can meet with you as soon as you arrive."

Anakin noted that Mace had the wit not to offer himself as a stand-in for Obi Wan. And that the Korun master's last words had been delivered in a gentler tone, one that hinted – very subtly- at a certain degree of human empathy beneath the Jedi ice. But it wasn't good enough, not by a long shot.

"No, no thank you master. I'll…I'll just wait until Obi Wan is back," he grumbled.

Mace Windu nodded once, very slowly and solemnly, his deep brown eyes seeming once again to size up the young "Chosen One" and find him not to his own personal choosing.

Anakin stared back, disconsolate. Where was Obi Wan? Why was he never around when he was _needed? _He lied, he pretended not have feelings, and then he _disappeared, abandoned _Anakin just at the most crucial moment. This was all his fault.

"May the Force be with you," Mace Windu said, dismissing him.

Yeah, kriff that. He was on his _own— _as usual. The Force surged and darkened around him. He slammed his finger against the comm. panel, cutting off the fading blue image.

When the transmission had ended, Anakin was trapped in the cockpit again, at close quarters with his own frustration and the trickling grains of time, running out all too fast. There was absolutely no way in the nine hells the Republic could go through with this protection contract. It all came down to Hojo Lenn, the spider at the center of an evil web. Like the mysterious Sith lord the Jedi council had been seeking all these years – ever since Naboo – he spewed forth filth and suffering and lies and deceptions in a limitless fountain, drowning out light and clarity until the whole galaxy appeared in nothing but varying shades of gray. Good was evil, evil was good….it made his head hurt. He hated this war, and the confusion it sowed. He longed for clean distinctions: black, white. Good, bad. Right, wrong.

He was sick to death of lingering twilight.

Making his decision, he punched the fighter's engines back into life and shot away, streaking toward his distant goal with the singular focus of a starving predator. Even if the rest of the universe was mired in ambiguity, _he_ knew his purpose.

Twilight deepened into looming dusk.

* * *

><p>The Force warned him, and he bolted upright. Three running strides brought Obi Wan to the doors of Lenn's room; and murky or not, the Force overrode their locking mechanism. Shree Uun was only a pace behind him, startled by his sudden leap into motion, by the urgency of his actions.<p>

"What are you doing?" she hissed in the darkness, voice rigid with alarm.

"Danger," he answered curtly, pushing her out of his path. The Twi'Lek courtesans sat up in the middle of Lenn's silken nest of a bed, drawing the coverlets over their bare chests, screaming in fright as he bounded onto the thick mattress, grabbed for the pillows heaped in a soft mountain at its head.

Lenn stirred, shouted out some incoherent expression of displeasure. The Force resounded with danger; the thin bleeping of an remotely activated explosive sliced through the air; the Twi'Leks' shrieking drowned out Uun's shouted expletives.

He tossed mounds of synthsilk and velvet to the floor, hands seeking wildly for what the Force told him was there. His fingers closed around a cool sphere, nestled deep amid the downy pinks and lavenders. Grenade. About to blow.

He seized his blaster, blew out the bedroom window in a catastrophic blossoming of shards and sparks, and flung the deadly object through the newly-made opening with as much brute strength as he could muster, diving for Uun's gesticulating form at the same time. He slammed her to the carpeted floor beneath his own weight just as the disruptor charge exploded, sending a vibrant disc of blue-edged light careening through the air above their heads, dissecting the walls of the room in an instantaneous, devastating moment. The sonic disturbance followed, a sound felt rather than heard, a painful blow to the eardrums.

Plaster, paint, duracrete, glass fragments rained down. The expanding arc of the disruptor's effect field demolished the room's interior, left a cloud of fine particulate dust in its wake. The Twi'Leks and Lenn lay frozen in the middle of their bed; Uun writhed and pushed frantically, eventually managing to kick her rescuer in the gut hard enough to escape.

"Kriff, Ben! What in name of a Hutt's mother?" she fumed.

Lenn recovered his wits first. "How in all the vaping moons of hell did that get planted in my private chamber?" he roared.

The Clawdite waved an angry hand at the mess. "Blame the droids. I told you no servants, including automated."

"Shut up, Uun. You were on security here this afternoon." Lenn's eyes flicked in Ben's direction. "Fast thinking," he grunted. "_You're_ worth the money."

Serving droids tottered in, and the front doors were assaulted with pounding as the building's maintenance crew and emergency response team demanded entrance. One of the Twi'Leks scurried to admit them while the other helped Lenn heave himself out of bed. Shree Uun offered a very rude gesture to her employer's broad back and then stalked out of the ruined chamber.

"You could have killed yourself to save that son of a vetch," she spat at Ben as she shoved past. "You're an idiot."

He followed her out the doors, into the dim antechamber. "I'm _security,"_ he corrected her. "I thought you were too."

She poked a finger into his chest, hard. "I never met _security _that went in for chizzsk-head heroics." She tossed the curtain of golden hair over one shoulder. An irrational anger swelled around her in the Force. "Don't do that again or I'll have to kill you myself." For a moment, the façade melted, and her blunt reptilian face shone through the mask; then the shimmering glimpse of her true nature blurred back into the blonde human again.

"So glad you care," he replied acidly.

Uun stepped closer, the embers of anger transforming into mingled suspicion and desire. "How in kriff's name did you know that was going to happen?" she demanded, practically breathing in his face.

"I told you. I can read minds," he quipped.

"Really?" One hand came up to trace sensuously over his jawbone, down his neck. "Then read this." Her lightning-strike open-handed slap would have been stunning had he not blocked it. The Clawdite merely laughed and withdrew a step or two. "You arrogant gundark." Her eyes devoured him greedily for another moment before she turned and stalked off toward the knot of servants and officials crowding the entry hall.

Shree Uun's suspicion was one problem; the disruptor grenade presented another. How _had _it been so effectively hidden, and by what mechanism had it been triggered? And how many more attacks on Lenn's life would there be before the fateful agreement was signed in one standard day? The drug lord's enemies were cunning and determined – and running out of time.

Abruptly tired and dizzy, he sat back down upon one of the suite's lavishly upholstered chairs. The worst was surely yet to come…and he had certainly seen better days. The Force surged inelegantly against his mind, a sea sloppily churning on a broken shore. Was Lenn even worth this? Not for the first or last time, he allowed a distracting doubt to creep in: had the Council strayed from the path in agreeing to this mission in the first place? Had he? With a deep sigh, he closed his eyes and sought after the elusive center.

He had a duty. And at this moment, he really couldn't afford to meditate on its implications.


	8. Chapter 8

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8<strong>

By noon the following day, withdrawal symptoms had set in with a vengeance. Even two more doses of Shree Uun's "hair-o-the-akk" interim solution did little to quell the nauseating _ache_ of need, the insistent throb of longing for a lost paradise, the false nirvana of spice. Lenn mercifully decided to spend the day closeted in his own quarters, pursuing idle pleasures and preparing to sign his military protection agreement with the Republic the next day - though he had announced that a celebratory gathering at the Outlander was in order that evening.

Obi Wan waited the endless hours out, mind fortified behind painstakingly erected Force barriers, body mutinously demanding – _begging- _for relief in the form of another taste of Lenn's poison. He knelt in one of the suite's smaller alcoves, eyes closed, remaining willfully adrift in the fragmented currents of the Light while his limbs trembled violently and his nerves raised a strident and false alarm, sending thrills of anxiety and desperation cascading down his spine. If Force-born premonition sometimes evoked _bad feelings, _this experience upstaged them all. He felt as though the galaxy were about to implode, the stars themselves fall from orbit and crash down around him in an infinite apocalyptic ruin.

"Where's Ben?" he heard Lenn demand, at some point in the afternoon. There was a murmured reply from Uun, and then the heavy curtain separating the alcove from the main room was thrust aside.

A knowing chuckle. "You're not fit for duty tonight, are you?" the drug lord remarked. "Well, we can't have that. The Club could be crawling with assassins. Shall we fix you up, hm?"

"No," he responded, instantly, without bothering to open his eyes. His every cell screamed a defiant _yes, yes,yes, please._ But there is no desire, only the Force.

"I can handle security tonight," Uun put in. " Leave him alone."

Lenn's dismissive snort was barely audible. "You haven't made much of a showing lately," he purred, dangerously. "And need I remind you that Ben is _mine _now. Not yours."

Obi Wan squinted up at Lenn's silhouetee, its edges strangely distorted, blurred into vibrant smears of light and shadow. "I'll be fine tonight," he promised, shivering. The words were empty, but he would do what he must – however great the physical challenge.

"Of course you will," Lenn assured him. "Uun."

A moment later, Uun's wiry arms had wrapped around his elbows and pinned his arms in a painful hold. "I'm sorry, _chubassi,"_ the Clawdite whispered in his ear. He resisted momentarily, but his trembling limbs betrayed him. The shapeshifter tightened her precautionary grip. "Just relax," she sighed. "You don't have a choice anymore."

A glass was tipped against his mouth; Uun wrapped her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back; and burning, foul liquid drizzled hot down his throat, pooling in a burning lake below his ribs. Lenn's voice drifted away…Uun's hold on him loosened until he was falling apart, coming undone and dissipating into a dark, scarlet-smeared mist…

He was better prepared this time. The Force. He must not let go; he must hold to the still eye of the storm while reality splintered and melted around him. Already the world had reformed into alluring clouds, thunderheads heavy with the promise of false joy, a deluge of raw pleasure. He sheltered in the sure haven of the Light, feeling the storm draw nigh, quaking with desire for it…with dread at its inevitable advent.

The dark clouds descended, drew nigh, surrounded him. He resisted, throwing up barrier after barrier to keep them at bay, shimmering walls of light, diaphanous, fragile armor against the looming assault. Somewhere far outside, in the swirling veils of the clouds, Shree Uun's voice was murmuring, soothing; but the words bled into the amorphous storm, into the tattered veils of smoke that swelled against his stronghold, black as night, roiling with forbidden lightning.

The Force warped, twisted, crumbled like dust and spilled through his grasp. His defenses fell, dissolving into nebulous mist, into emptiness. And the lightning struck home, piercing him through, setting every nerve alight with exquisite unbidden pleasure. He arched, groaned, tried to fight free, called on the Force, cried out for it –

Joy erupted into pain as he resisted the illusion, bliss splintered into agony. A sniper's shot hammered into his chest, just above his heart, knocking him backward over the building's edge. He fell, far far down, through the shower of excruciating bliss, and hit bottom with a jolting thrill of ecstatic pain... He was cold, numb and deaf and mute, his own heart frozen mid-beat, his breath squeezed shut, the vitals blocker coursing poisonous and strong through every vein. Ahsoka was weeping over him, and then Anakin, and then other voices, a chorus of lamentation.

He could not move. The Force itself was suspended, crystallized within him, hardened into stasis. The weeping continued, softened, grew closer, became one voice. Hands were touching his dead skin, trailing stricken over his face, his closed eyes. The voice became breath, warm and scented like haffa blossoms, like sweet spices, like the thawing snow on Ilum's peaks. Breath became a touch; the Force quickened within him, his heart leapt back into reluctant rhythm. He gasped in a deep, shuddering breath, welcoming back life and sensation, greedily devouring the warmth pressed against his mouth, reaching for the Force and light and the thread of real, true and cherished memory, real pain and real joy…

Shree Uun abruptly drew back as he blinked and groaned, following that golden thread back to consciousness. Here, now: Coruscant, the war. Hojo Lenn's apartment, the mission. He was shaking like a victim of palsy, peering up at Shree Uun's borrowed face, the one surrounded by a halo of silver-gold not her own, not the one sanctified by still-smoldering memory.

"Well," the Clawdite remarked archly. "I'd sure like to be the person that was _intended_ for." She jabbed a finger into his chest. "You've been holding out on me, Ben."

He was far too miserable to offer any rebuttal.

"We're leaving in an hour or two," she informed him. "Better pull yourself all the way together. I'd say Lenn's got some serious enemies out there."

And he had no argument to make with that, either.

* * *

><p>Anakin knew the Underlevels well. They had been his own favorite, forbidden haunt as an initiate, the place where he fled to rummage in scrap piles and pursue illegal racing thrills; the place where more than one useful contact dwelt and made his shady version of a living. He had no idea where to find Hojo Lenn; but he knew where to find someone who would. All he needed was a sleazy slythmonger. The dirty pushers who sold deathsticks and other narcotics had to have a supplier, and a boss.<p>

The Outlander was a familiar enough venue. Obi Wan and he had chased Padme's would-be assassin here some years ago. Before. Before the war and the deceptions and the lies had begun pouring down into his life, a relentless and corrosive acid rain. Then the Club had seemed somehow alluring, a gaudy and whimsical place full of people who walked paths far outside the rigid confines of his duty. Now it was just another dismal gutter in the galaxy's extensive sewer system, a place where sentient trash eddied and piled in sodden heaps. Its glanor had fled, with the last remnants of his childhood, with his innocence.

He made for the bar, lounged against it, brooded. The place was relatively empty at this hour – after sunset it would be teeming with every variety of scum imaginable, with raucous music and writhing bacci smoke, with lewd laughter and drunken shouting. The bartender spared him a grunt of welcome and tipped his head forward inquisitively.

"Dustball," he ordered.

The man leaned closer over the bar. "You of age?" he asked, laconically.

Anakin shoved the hem of his cloak aside, revealing the saber hilt.

"Chiiiiizzzsk," the bartender hissed. "Don't kriffing make a mess in my bar." He slammed the Dustball down and shuffled away, vexation and disgust smeared behind him in the Force like an energy-slug's glimmering trail.

The Dustball tasted sweet going down, but the meersha spice rimming the glass made his sinuses burn with unexpected fire.

Soon enough a slythmonger in the customary drab attire accosted him, sidling up to him as he brooded over the empty glass. "Hey. Wanna but a deathstick?" He displayed his wares in an alluring fan of oranges and yellows.

"You don't want to sell me deathsticks," the young Jedi growled, his mechno-hand closing in a tight fist around the colorful cluster of plastoid tubes. "You wanna tell me where you _got _these."

The unfortunate pusher struggled to free his precious merchandise from the belligerent customer's grip. Anakin's hand tightened into a fist; vibrantly hued liquid spattered over the polished bartop.

"Hey! _Hey!"_ the slythmonger shrieked. The bartender cast an aggravated scowl in Anakin's direction.

"Tell me," the latter person continued in a dangerously silken tone, "Or your throat is next." The look of terror on the shabby deathstick vendor's face fanned the kindling Dark into invisible flames. Give him an excuse, and Anakin would _crush_ the skull of every being who sold or supplied such filth. He would _purge_ Coruscant of its resident evil.

"I – I - Lenn. This is Lenn's stuff. You just wrecked a kriffing _fortune's _worth of it! You gotta pay for that or Lenn'll have me skinned!"

"I'll pay him, all right," Anakin promised. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," the quaking slythmonger sobbed.

"That's enough," growled the barkeep, jerking his head at the doors. "Cut out of here. Take it outside."

"Tell me," Anakin commanded, snapping his victim's will in a Force-vise as easily as he had crushed the deathsticks a moment earlier.

"He lives in Belshuu Towers, top floor, the penthouse, I never been there but that's his pad please don't kill me I'm just a pusher I don't know anything!"

He released his hold on the pathetic informant and stormed out the doors. The deep street-level chasm was already cloaked in darkness as the sun set far overhead, dipping behind the artificial canyons of the cityscape. Red stained the evening sky, soaked into the horizon's ragged hem.

And pedestrians fled before him as he strode down the center of the walkway, grim purpose carved into his features as surely as the scar which slashed, knife-like, furious, across his right eye. Lenn would sign no agreement tomorrow. He swore it by the Force, by the cacophony of warring Dark and Light that howled in his heart. He would see to it himself.

* * *

><p>Shree Uun had no respect for his need to meditate. Of course, she was completely oblivious to its existence, so there was no rational grounds for blaming her; and yet, Obi Wan could not completely suppress a surge of raw annoyance at the pair of hands that slipped, uninvited, around his neck and slid down between the too-thin shirt and his skin.<p>

The Clawdite's breath was hot on his neck. "So…." She suggested. "What do I have to do for a repeat performance, hm? Slip you another deathstick?"

_Stars forbid._ "Answer a few questions," he offered. It was a generous compromise, in his estimation, but she seemed miffed.

"You know, you're good to look at but a real pain in the ass to talk to."

"That's the price." The Negotiator had managed more… intractable… personalities. Without resorting to aggressive diplomacy.

Uun nibbled on his ear lobe. Her teeth were uncommonly sharp. "Fine."

"You aren't addicted to Lenn's spice. Why not?"

"Clawdite," she said. "I'm _immune._ And that makes me valuable. My eyes can be open even when everyone else is stoned or high as a starcruiser."

Of course. He should have remembered that. His wits were wool-gathering. "Then why do you stay? Someone with your unique talents could surely find a better employer."

She hissed and bit hard enough to elicit an answering hiss from him. _Blast _it, Uun was a nuisance to rival the most persistent assassin droid ever programmed. "It's called blackmail. Lenn's got the goods on me. I might have left a mess here and there when I was younger."

He had a bad feeling she was _wearing _the face and body of one of these so-called "messes" but didn't inquire any further. "But how did you end up here in the first place?" he insisted. "By chance? You aren't a user, so what drew you in?"

"That's enough," she warned, slipping round until she had planted herself in his lap again. Long fingers twined idly in his hair. "You got your answers. Now pay up."

"All or nothing," he countered. "Answer my question."

The Clawdite's illusory form shifted as her mood plunged into resentment. The lizard's rumpled face appeared beneath the smooth visage of the blonde woman, as then disappeared back into the depths, like a whaladon surfacing and retreating beneath the waves. "I was with someone. He got the job for us both, got hooked in, and died." Her fingers twisted hard, pulling at delicate nape hairs. "You kriffing idiots are all the same. I hate Lenn for it."

"I'm sorry." What else could he say? Hired assassin or not, Uun's loss echoed like a dull bruise in the Force, one which would never fully heal.

"You owe me now, _chooba._ No more procrastinating." She grasped either side of his face, exacted payment in a leisurely and expert manner, and then released him with a huff of disgust. "_Slet,"_ she cursed at him. " You didn't mean that at all. You gorgeous piece of chisszk."

It took some effort to resist the urge to wipe his mouth, but he managed it. Uun stood and stamped away across the lush carpeting, leaving him alone with the still-simmering headache, the niggling roots of a new craving for _more, _for _something better,_ and with the clotted, turgid Force, bright with warning of danger to come. Lenn was due to sign the accursed protection agreement with the Senate tomorrow; two attempts on his life had already failed. Surely his foes would stop at nothing tonight, their last chance before the fateful event in the morning.

He could _feel _the danger on its way, a dark shadow winging toward them even as they waited here in Lenn's private fortress . He needed to stop it, to maintain his focus now, at the last and most crucial moment…if only he could banish the aggravating, perpetual tension droning deep at the base of his every thought, every breath. Driving physical, psychic _need…_ messy and cloying, invading his tranquility, leaching his vitality. Spice slowly choked out the Force, insidious, inevitable, vying for supremacy at the center of his being.

He hated it.

But Jedi do not hate. Hate is from the Dark Side, and leads quickly back to it. He exhaled, released anger, released anxiety. But he still needed – wanted – the spice. It suffused him, surrounded him, bound all things together…_no!_ He drew two hands across his face, through his hair. No. He would not give such satisfaction, such twisted obeisance.

"Here, ma buki," Uun muttered thrusting the now-customary glass of mixed alcohol and deathstick dregs at him. "You need it."

He tossed it back angrily, disgusted at himself, at the whole situation – and then froze, cold realization flooding him with a clarity that dispelled the veils of frustration. "That was different," he growled. "What did you do?"

Uun smiled, knelt down before him, her shimmering mane of silver-gold already smelted in the forge of illusion, spreading in a liquid pool of ambience, molten star-stuff and frenetic light. "Two whole ones, lover," she told him sadly. "We call it a Deathstar… you're going on a long, long journey."

_What? _He clawed futilely at the fugitive scraps of reality, at the tormented Force, its very light refracted into a blurry mockery, like a carnival mirror. The dark shadow loomed closer, its hot breath felt like an ethereal wind. _Danger._ "Uun!" he managed to gasp out, "What are you _doing!_"

"I'm going with Lenn tonight," she informed him, her voice fading into the chiming diaspora of sound and color, "Alone. You just _really_ get in the way of a girl trying to do her job."

_Danger! Danger! Danger!_ The Force surged, roared, spattered blurred sensation into a brilliant supernova of particles, into a spattering of bright dust. And the looming shadow burst through the thin veil between thought and reality, scattering sparkling shards of Light as it descended, wrathful, through the broken skylight above.

It was cloaked in ebony, and wielded a sword of blue fire.


	9. Chapter 9

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 9<strong>

The skylight ruptured into falling shards, disintegrating beneath the power of his fury and the seething Force. Anankin launched himself through the opening, landing on a thick carpeted floor inside the dim apartment's vast lounge. His saber thrummed hot in his hand, thirsty for justice, for a restitution of right and order. Its blue light cut clean and bright through the shadowy grays of the penthouse, through the lies and compromises surrounding this whole affair. Now was the moment of truth and reckoning.

There were only two people in the room, crouched on the floor, close together – too close together to be anything but lovers. The woman spun about to face him when he landed, her delicate features drawn into a tight scowl, one hand wrapped about a blaster's hilt with the casual ease born of long practice.

"Where's Lenn?" Anakin demanded, weapon humming loudly, angled between them. He would deflect any shot she fired right back into her body.

She tossed her silky mane of white-gold back over one shoulder, looked him up and down. "Well," she remarked, not intimidated. "So Jedi _do _do assassinations."

"Where is he?" Anakin repeated, taking a threatening step forward. If she thought he was above taking down a woman, she had never seen him in action against Ventress. War didn't leave room for such mincing courtesies.

The platinum haired woman smiled sardonically. "Thought you could read minds and all that, hot-shot." She backed toward the bedroom doors, keeping the blaster trained on the invader.

"Uun. Get Lenn out of here. I'll deal with _this."_

Anakin's blood froze. And in the instant it took him to regain his wits, the other occupant of this shadowed enclave stepped forward to stand a mere two meters from Anakin, as the woman slipped into the room beyond.

"I – I – master!" Words formed and then shattered, ephemeral sparks in his mind. "What are you _doing?"_ He held his blade downward, toward the floor, reeling with the shock of it, with the strange disturbance eddying around Obi Wan in the Force, an awful distortion of his familiar presence, a twisted and tormented aura, tinged with smearing crimsons.

"There you are," Obi Wan said, in a softly dangerous voice Anakin had never once heard addressed to himself, even in the moment of his most egregious violation, his most reckless defiance. "I've been waiting for you a long, long time."

There was something terribly _wrong_ with Obi Wan. Anakin backpedaled one step, heart clenching in his chest, cold adrenaline washing through his limbs. And what in the _hells_ was his master doing in here? With that – that _woman?_ In those clothes?

"Out of my way," he warned. "I'm dealing with Lenn."

"No," Obi Wan corrected him, with a quiet eagerness that heralded the beginning of a life and death battle. "You're dealing with _me."_

Anakin flourished his blade high, in an angry circle. "Master!" he shouted. "What's _wrong_ with you! What in the kriff are you _doing?"_

But apparently negotiation was not an option. In the next moment, Anakin's own humming blade was matched by another pulsing line of blue plasma. The Force roared, churned into a maelstrom, a thunderstorm of power circling the two Jedi.

Anakin felt dizzy. He was here to stop a vile murdering criminal. Obi Wan – the Council – the Order – was standing in his way, blocking him, holding him back, upholding evil and disorder. He was betrayed, they were betrayers, they were hypocrites and liars and traitorous soulless loveless pawns of a corrupt system. The Force spun around him, screamed with his outrage, with Obi Wan's swiftly-mounting tension, with immiment deadly attack. This was wrong, and crazy and-

-there wasn't time to think. Obi Wan moved first, saber howling as he leapt forward into a blinding attack, defensive center abandoned in favor of devastating aggression. Anakin blocked, and blocked again, blood exploding with rage, with resentment. He fought with his envy, with his jealously, with his fear, defending himself from blows, from criticism, from distrust, from authority. The sabers hammered and spun, clashed spitting and hissing together, tore the air to hot shreds, tore furniture to smoldering ruin, carved ruinous scars upon carpet and floors. Obi Wan's blade seared a hot burn along the outside of his shoulder; his answering strike nearly took off an ear. Sweat streamed into Anakin's eyes, stung them and blurred the battle into a salty miasma. The Force erupted with confusion and pain and desperation. They clashed, fell apart, growled and flung themselves into the fray again.

Anakin backflipped over the wreck of a silken couch. "Obi Wan!" he hollered. He was going to kill the man if this didn't stop. "Master!"

The answer was a Force push that sent him catapulting backward into the wall. Breath left his body; he fell to the floor, grunting, fingers clawing frantically for his dropped saber hilt. Obi Wan was descending upon him like a thunderbolt, blue fire tearing through the darkness, implacable.

Anakin kicked out, hard, catching Obi Wan hard in the ribs and sending him crashing into the wall. He grunted in pain, and the Force sparked with vibrant distress. Panting, Anakin twisted round, kicked his foe's weapon out of the way, grappled with Obi Wan. They writhed, rolled, threw punches. Obi Wan caught him in his injured knee. Screaming, he doubled over, only to be thrown hard into the wall. Anger flared white –hot; he Force-pinned Obi Wan beneath him, slammed his prosthetic hand into the injured rib. There was a crack, and a hoarse yell of pain. Anakin pressed a knee into his friend's chest, hands crushing into his wrists. "Stop it! Master! _Stop!"_

* * *

><p>Obi Wan fought with every scrap of strength he possessed...but the <em>thing<em> was stronger. Its power grew and multiplied into a dizzying torrent, a wedding of light and darkness, an infinite sea of twilight grays, bottomless limbos of torment and suffering. It had fallen through the skylight like a meteroite, like a dark star descending to wreak havoc on the world below; and in the first moment of beholding it, he had felt the veil torn asunder, the obscuring shroud of the Dark side lifted at last to reveal its legions in full battle array. A hellish dawn broke through the lingering dusk, premonition melting into harsh reality, reality into living nightmare, the rising sun a black hole which sucked the crimson-smeared world into itself, into destruction, into nothingness. He beheld the enemy, the horrible truth lying in ambush just beyond the ramparts of the future, the One they had been looking for.

It had come for him. And he stood alone.

And he had fought, with every bleeding, broken scrap of strength he possessed...but the _thing_ was stronger. It was infinitely stronger.

This monster – this thing of shadows and clotted blood, the hidden enemy always waiting beyond his inner horizon, the thing that _defined_ every premonition, every _bad feeling -_ was crushing him, pressing the breath out of his lungs, its metallic claws closing round his wrists, pinning him down. Pain blossomed, delicate flowers of pleasure-agony, rippling outward from his broken rib to his belly and chest, a fire that ripped a strange hole in the smearing tapestry of scarlet. The thing of shadows was screaming at him, its voice melting in the winds, the hurricane of sound and light and motion, the swirling clouds of smoke billowing off the molten world. Waves of heat washed over him, consuming his flesh; he twisted, arched backward, anything to escape the excruciating ecstasy.

But the shadow-thing only pressed harder, chaining him in the inferno, crushing him. Its face was smeared into tattered ribbons of light and dark, a cowl of smoke and illusions. He couldn't defeat it; he had been foolish to try. Its screams transformed to howling laughter, and the wisping veils were blown apart by its hot breath. There was no human face there at all, only a battered skull sheathed in a plasteel mask, and robotic limbs sprouting grotesquely beneath. It was Greivous and Maul and Dooku and Ventress and something more, something…elusive. The thing he had been looking for, seeking in the Force, for so many, many years, the shadow behind the shadows, the lord behind the servants, the darkness behind the fallen stars.

"Obi Wan!"

It knew him, but he had no name for it. It held the high ground.

"Master!"

It couldn't be. He begged the Force not to let it be…but the Force was deaf to his pleas, eluding his grasp, turning its back on him, leaving him alone with this awful, unbidden truth..

"Obi Wan!"

The thing spoke with Anakin's voice. He looked up into the wraith's face, into the fire-ringed mask, the empty sockets, caverns of hate in which fire kindled darkly, and saw Anakin….Anakin's skull, streaked with clinging fragments of blood and charred flesh, crowned with an invisible halo of wrath, the lightless corona of the Dark. And that was when the Force abandoned him utterly, and his heart broke and he sobbed with boundless, feverish denial and terror.

The world sank beneath the tide of despair and melted into nothingness…and he welcomed its obliterating embrace.

* * *

><p>Anakin staggered upright, his back hitting the wall. He gasped in a few heaving breaths, staring in disbelief at the pathetic wreck of a man lying unconscious at his feet. He gritted his teeth, fighting down a deep howl of confusion and despair. Nothing made sense…. nothing was as it should be.<p>

Lenn.

The doors lay just beyond. The golden-haired woman had gone to help Lenn escape. He was across the room in a single bound, hammering at the doors. They did not yield. He summoned the Force's limitless power and wrenched them open, tearing the hydraulics out of their sockets in a shower of sparks.

Inside, two blue-complected Twi'Leks shrilled in abject terror and dove behind the massive central sleep platform. A cold draught whipped at his cloak hem – an open balcony door. Landing pad. Private speeder. The transparisteel panes shattered beneath his onslaught, and then he was in the light-fretted air of Coruscuant's night, perched on a thin docking strip outside the balcony doors. Lenn was already inside the aircar, beneath its protective canopy, the strange woman only a pace away.

She pivoted, fired off three shots at him. He deflected them, sending them spattering out into the night, among the whizzing traffic lanes.

The woman hissed, and her beautiful face melted away, a dull grey-green reptile's snout appearing where pale ivory had been a moment before.

"Back off, Jedi," she snarled. "Lenn's _my _kill."

His heart skipped a beat. His saber thrummed loud, still angled across his body.

She backed up a step, toward the speeder, blaster gripped hard in one hand. "I've been trying to hit him for two days. Tonight is _my_ night. Kriff off, Jedi I was here first, and I've got more reasons to hate him."

He stood, and the cold wind whipped at his cloak, lifted his hair and wicked the sweat off his forehead. Traffic flowed in endless lines above. Lenn was pounding on the aircar's canopy with one fat hand, panicked, ready to leave.

The Clawdite took another step backward. She hesitated. "You didn't kill Ben, did you?" she asked.

Ben? Did she mean Obi Wan? "No."

"Good." Another step. Lenn was frantic, shouting at her from the interior of his vehicle.

Anakin stood suspended in a pool of blue luminance, the bright etching of his blade. He watched the murderess slowly step onto the aircar's footboard, hesitate, eyes fixed on him, watching his every move.

His blade disappeared as he powered it down. He stepped backward, into shadow.

Shree Uun nodded once, holstered her own weapon, popped the canopy and slid into the pilots' seat beside Lenn. In a moment, the sleek aircar had careened off into the night.

Anakin's teeth were chattering. He felt bile rise in his throat, and he swallowed it down. He shouldn't have done that…he was a _Jedi. _But he had done nothing. And yet he had come to commit the same act, had he not? Lenn was a vile excrescence of the lowest hells, wasn't he? His rage cooled, and hardened into a lump in his throat. He replaced the saber at his side with shaking hand, the night wind now chilling him.

"Master," he groaned.

He stumbled back through the wrecked balcony doors, across the bedroom. The Twi'Leks cringed and whimpered as he passed, their hands clutching at long ornamented lekku. The bedroom doors hung open, random sparks still spurting from the ruined housing. Ozone and the scent of charred fibers filled the air. He pushed the shredded couch aside and knelt down.

Obi Wan was drenched in sweat, yet cold to the touch. He looked worse now than he had dead, at his own funeral….Another howl began its trembling ascent within Anakin's chest, and he choked it down. His fingers found the thin, frantic pulse, the place where his vicious punch had fractured a rib. The Force churned sloppily around them, warped and disturbed – with much more than physical pain.

Drugs? A cold pit settled in his stomach. Lenn's spice. Or deathsticks. Or both. Suicide, either way you figured it. What in the _kriff_ had Obi Wan been thinking? What had he been _doing?_ Anger swelled anew, carrying disgust on its rising crest. He gritted his teeth, fighting down another howl, a cry of rebellion against nameless powers and principalities. The _Council_ was to blame. They had sent Obi Wan in here, on some perverse mission to save a wicked man from well-deserved death. They had _used_ him, the way he had _used _Anakin. They sacrificed their own to save a kriffing _murderer._ In the name of peace and justice.

He hated…..them. It. Everything.

Somewhere outside, distantly, an emergency claxon wailed in the aftermath of an air collision. Cold air wafted in from the open balcony beyond, snaking through the gutted rooms.

Chilled to the bone, he lifted Obi Wan over his shoulders and left. It was over.


	10. Chapter 10

**Shades of Gray**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 10<strong>

The world oozed and congealed back into tentative wholeness, slurred bands of color and drifting sound, a yielding solidity beneath his aching limbs. A deep tympanum note of pain shuddered through the confused medley of sensation, beating a slow dirge of longing for something…something missing…something _better, wonderful…_

"Master, I think he's coming round."

That voice was young and unfamiliar. There was a soft scent in the air, the echo of incense. Feet pattered away and then returned. Another voice joined the first, an older female one, slightly accented – the characteristic Twi'Lek huskiness present there beneath the Basic syllables. Vokara Che, the Temple's tyrannical senior healer.

What was she doing _here?_

"Thank the Force," she muttered, sotto voce. "I was beginning to wonder…"

Obi Wan stirred, and instantly regretted his audacity. Headache erupted behind his eyes and set his teeth on edge. The insistent whine of _need _opened like a dark chasm, until it was an abyss of insatiable longing. _Spice,_ and the oblivion of kaleidoscopic illusion. He _wanted_ it. More than life. More than the Force. "No," he gritted out. That was wrong. He thrashed, struggling against the cloying bonds of desire that seemed to coil about his every nerve, his every thought. He was _polluted, _with spice and the Dark and this foreign and twisted _want._ It was inside him, inside his hammering pulse, leaking through his pores in rivulets of spice-stained sweat, cramping his muscles into taut cords of spice-saturated agony.

"Master? I don't understand…what's?"

"It's to be expected," Vokara Che barked out, curt and efficient. "Don't panic, Ji Sho."

Don't panic? But panic was the only thing left to do…and Ji Sho's childish flare of confusion and distress was a spark set to waiting timber. On cue, frothing anxiety exploded into bright panic, into clawing nameless dread, into horror. The future coalesced into the present, into the now, a weird carnival of faces and keening howls. The demon, the _thing,_ which had assaulted him earlier! Where was it? It was near, approaching, lurking just around a corner, or over the world's darkening horizon. The incense in the air smelled of _spice; _he could taste it in the back of his throat, feel it burning on his tongue. The _thing _was Darkness and spice, and – and-

"Anakin!" he screamed.

The muttering voices multiplied, his panic stirring them as cold wind whips at dried leaves. More footfalls, more voices, hands grasping at him, pushing and holding him down. Somewhere in the blur of assailants, Mace's baritone rumbled, the Force rippling golden about his voice, warring with the floating veil of _spice._

He had to save Anakin. There wasn't any time – the hells were already reaching for him, he was already half-consumed, his innards eaten alive by yearning for oblivion, for obliterating illusion. "Anakin!" Somehow he found the strength to throw off his captors, desperately calling upon the bright sparks of Light dancing around Mace. Bodies hit the floor, he surged upward, through a wall of agony and shifting color. The world spun treacherously.

"_Fierfek,"_ the Korun Jedi cursed beneath his breath. "Obi Wan!"

"Anakin!" he shouted, voice cracking. They had to save Anakin, they should let him go, let him sink into nothingness, into destruction, just save Anakin stop the demon stop the nightmare stop the disintegrating cosmos, the burning crimson fire kindling black within the Force itself…

"Somebody get Skywalker in here!"

Mace understood. Gratitude flooded through him. And he let the grasping, imperious hands push and pull at him and knead and soothe and stroke. How many star-forsaken healers did they think it took? He only needed Anakin, and then he could die and cheat _spice_ of its victory. If Anakin were safe.

An eternity later, Anakin finally arrived. "Master."

It was difficult to focus. His eyes and his mind drifted away, again and again, heavy with some new and unwelcome weight, a ponderous suggestion of sleep. _Blast_ the conniving healers… but at last he managed to weld striating light and color into a coherent image. Anakin. Not a charred skull beribboned with its own gore, brow not alight with malice. Just Anakin, whole and sound and intact. His Padawan who had been ripped away by the war and made a Knight too soon. He grabbed Anakin's wrist. "Stay," he ordered.

"I'm here," Anakin said, suddenly biting his own lip hard. Why did he look so pained?

"Stay," Obi Wan repeated_. Stay here, by my side, in the Temple, in the Order, in the Light. Don't ever leave. Just stay. You must. You don't understand_.

The Force around Anakin was a blazing hearthfire, heat radiating from a young star, a life-giving, soporific heat in which even the invasive siren-call of spice shriveled and fluttered into ash…like sound and vision…like thought itself...

* * *

><p>The Council chamber was a broken circle without Obi Wan's presence. Anakin felt the gaze of the assembled masters – a few via hologram – rest on him in accusing silence. Their disapproval slid off the ebony folds of his cloak and pooled in the blue-grey shadows at his feet. His head was held high.<p>

"We have put this off as long as possible," Mace Windu stated, dark eyes boring into the young Jedi standing in the floor's center. "These last two days have been trying."

Anakin remained silent. Fury ebbed and flowed with his blood, a tidal pulse waiting for a dam to break, to unleash itself on these waiting shores. He held it back. "I agree," he said curtly. Watching Obi Wan suffer through acute withdrawal from a near-fatal overdose of ixetal cilena _could_ be described as "trying." If obscene understatement qualified as truth. Not that the Jedi Council cared about things like that, of course.

"You requested leave to go on a meditative retreat, Skywalker. But instead of returning directly to the Temple, you proceeded to Hojo Lenn's private residence. Why?"

Mace Windu had the unique ability to use bluntness as an edged weapon. "Obi Wan needed me," Anakin retorted. "That much is obvious."

The disrespect garnered him a few indrawn breaths. Mace's fingers arranged themselves into a mirrored steeple. "Master Kenobi was under cover on a delicate assignment. One which had grave ramifications for the Republic. One which failed."

No, really. "He could have died."

"That is not the point, Skywalker!"

Anakin felt the dam crack ominously. "With respect, my masters," –he included the entire Council in a scathing and ironic glance – "_You _sent him into that nightmare. And I rescued him."

"Hojo Lenn was killed in an aircar accident the night before he was due to sign a vital agreement with the Republic Senate – one affecting military finance. I do not believe such an event could be a coincidence. Because of your interference, Master Kenobi was unable to prevent that assassination."

Anakin clamped his jaw shut. His _interference?_ If they only knew… but they couldn't know. Not ever. "He wasn't in a condition to stop anything," Anakin retorted, hotly. "That mission was insane. It was a trap. And this Council didn't care who was sacrificed, so long as the Senate got its drug money." He was shaking, the walls of his reserve crumbling to ruin. Rage dribbled over the edges of his control.

Yoda intervened, thrusting his gimer stick out in warning. "Accuse the Council of corruption, do you?"

Cold fire swept through his veins. "No," he spat out. No... he didn't _accuse_ the Council of anything. He _knew_ it. He _lived_ it.

Mace leaned back in his chair. "You stand censured for interfering in another Jedi's mission without consulting the Council or seeking permission of any kind. That's the second time you have needlessly endangered a covert operation through reckless action, Skywalker. It must not happen again."

They were _censuring_ him? He ground his teeth and lifted his chin. Heat roiled off his skin, set the shadows on the mosaic floor into flickering unrest, seared through the Force like a hot rain. The Councilors stirred, frowned at him. With an immense act of will, he bowed, his gritted teeth holding back his bubbling molten wrath, the volcanic flow of hot resentment. It ran scarlet over his vision, across his mind, burned in his gut and welled up in a thick torrent, a hard fountain of anger rising in his throat. _Damn the arrogant Council and their lies and their hubris!_

Without apology or dismissal, he swept round and stalked out the door, his black cloak billowing at his feet, a shadow frolicking at its master's heels.

* * *

><p>To be awake was to be torn asunder, stretched on a rack between the Force and the irrepressible longing for <em>spice.<em> It was… unpleasant. But then, this was an improvement. So he was told, and part of him agreed, for surely inner conflict was a sign that the despotism of the spice was losing its absolute sway, its hold on him slipping fractionally with each passing hour. Yes, improvement.

He preferred sleep. Sleep was uncomplicated and blessedly free of headache, nausea, and the tension of opposites, the stalemate playing itself out within his every cell. But one could not sleep all the time, not with the healers always prowling about.

"Master Kenobi?"

He was coming to know Ji Sho, the apprentice healer, quite well. The poor boy had nearly – but not completely- recovered from the physical shock of being Force-pushed across the room during their initial encounter. He was nearly- but not quite – recovered from the emotional shock of seeing a vaunted Council member reduced to such pathetic straits. The poor creature would likely carry the bruises for some time yet. Obi Wan felt responsible for him.

"I'm still here, Ji Sho." He heard the boy's feet patter in, hesitant. "Unfortunately."

"I'm supposed to make you eat."

He rolled over – painful, not a good idea, on top of the still tender place where somebody had crushed his rib into fragments- and squinted at the Padawan balefully. "You should surrender now. Master Che has sent you on a mission doomed to failure."

Ji Sho paled a bit, twisting his fingers together beneath the wide sleeve hems of his tunic.

Obi Wan managed a thin smile.. "Bring in the blasted food. And then you can eat it for me. You are sworn to alleviate suffering, I might point out."

"Oh. Uh…" He could hear the poor apprentice healer swallow, puzzling this over.

Ji Sho reminded him of a much younger Anakin, a confused and sometimes endearingly obtuse ex-slave trying to pretend he was a Jedi master, trying to live up to a title foisted upon him by unhappy fate and Qui Gon Jinn's premature announcement to the Council, trying to please and defy Obi Wan all at once, trying to simply…grow up. Faster than he should have.

"Are you…all right, master?"

"No." He closed his eyes, gingerly shifted to his back again. No, he was not all right. Emotion such as that was not all right, it was a distraction and a danger to self and others. He was not all right – he wanted the peace and serenity of contemplation, and he simultaneously wanted to be impaled by another vibrant hallucinatory knife, a rending thrust straight through his burdened heart…No. He just wanted to sleep, really. A long, long time. Until the war was over. That would be good.

"So…..the food?" Ji Sho asked hopefully.

"No." He would simply vomit it up anyway, and that was dreadfully uncivilized. Much better to sleep.

Eventually the obstinate Padawan got the message and trudged off to report his failure to Vokara Che. Hopefully he would not be chastised too severely. He was a good boy. And he was a healer…unlikely to be sent undercover on mission after harrowing mission, forced to choke down murder and filth and spice and moral compromise in the name of peace. Unlikely to be a General charged with sending thousands to their death in the name of justice. Unlikely to sit on the Council, struggling to navigate a labyrinth of dilemmas in which every turning was a dead end leading to utter ruin. No, Ji Sho was good, and did not deserve such a fate.

Such shadow realms were reserved for others. For those who volunteered. For those who lied, even to themselves.

He slid back into a restless sleep.

* * *

><p>The Supreme Chancellor greeted him with the same welcoming smile and sympathetic gaze that he always did. He offered no <em>censure.<em>

"Anakin, my boy. It is good to see you after all this time. I trust you are well...I must say, rumor has it that your friend Master Kenobi is, ah, recovering from injury?"

He shrugged, and wandered over to the window. Coruscant sprawled below, oblivious to the lies and deceptions that maintained its precarious balance at the center of the galaxy. "He'll be fine. He's ... strong in the Force."

Palpatine's mouth thinned. "Yes, yes, I suppose he is. But my goodness...the Council does seem to throw their best and brightest into the most compromising situations. It makes me shudder to think of the risks they take. But then, it is always in such a worthy cause."

Anakin's spine stiffened. He barely suppressed a snort of disgust. "They were protecting Hojo Lenn. Lenn. That foul murdering filth. Did you know that, Chancellor?"

Palpatine's blue eyes widened, and then dropped to the ground sadly. "For money," he said, tightly. "That is the way of things. The Senate will do anything to fund this war...and I'm afraid the Jedi will do anything the Senate asks of them. It is a very _unstable_ arrangement, wouldn't you agree?"

He turned. "The Jedi have been the guardians of peace for thousands of years. What do you mean?"

"Anakin, Anakin. I am the _last_ one to criticize the Jedi. Indeed, I might be their only real supporter. The Senate only wants them as tools and pawns in a power game. No, the Jedi Council is the flower of the Republic. It needs to be preserved from corruption in this time of war. I think...well...I wish there were some way to provide support. From my personal office."

Anakin frowned. "I don't understand."

But Palpatine waved the thought aside. "I shall think upon it, my boy. Moral compromise is the true enemy of the Republic. And none of us are immune from it. Even the Jedi, as I'm sure you have observed."

Anakin didn't want to think about that right now. "What about the Senate agreement with Lenn? What will happen to Lenn's spice mines?"

The Chancellor sat down heavily in his chair. "Alas, I fear that they wil be easy prey for Separatist raids. Dooku will not fail to capitalize on such an opening. And we cannot afford to launch another campaign to stop him, not without the extra funds promised by Lenn." A deep sigh. "It sometimes seems that the universe itself conspires against us, Anakin."

The thought was chilling.

"We must hold to the few people we can trust," Palpatine continued. "That is the important thing, my boy: know who your true friends are."

Anakin nodded, feeling the cold penetrate to his very core. He only wished he knew - for certain- who those true frineds might be.

* * *

><p>Yoda's cane tapped softly against the floor as he entered. A snuff of irritation and a long grumbling imprecation, issued under the grand Master's breath in an incomprehensible garble, signalled that his mood was not a happy one.<p>

"Obi Wan," he grunted, planting himself firmly in the center of the room.

"You received my message, master."

The pointed ears quirked upward and then drooped. "Denied is your request."

"What?" Exhausted as he was, such a ridiculous statement quickened his long-dormant temper.

"Heard me, you did. Considered the matter this morning, the Council did. Out-voted eleven to one, you are. Submit to our judgement you must."

"You cannot _make _me-"

The gimer stick slammed into the hard tile with an earsplitting crack. "Enough, youngling." Yoda's green-gold eyes slatted with hard authority. "Under care of healers you are. Declare you mentally unfit, Vokara Che will if ask her I do. Your decision it is not."

Oh really? "I shall simply resubmit my petition when they release me," he argued.

"Then escape here, will you never," Yoda countered, his tiny snub nose wrinkling with impish obstinacy, his gimlet eyes hardening into implacable slits.

Obi Wan closed his eyes, feeling vexation shift inexplicably to heartache, to a barely healed exhaustion lingering too close to the surface. Perhaps he wasn't fit to make decisions after all. But that had been _his_ point. It was irksome to have the fact turned back against him.

"Tired you are," Yoda observed, not unkindly. "Too much, have you shouldered lately."

"I don't think -"

"Yes!" Yoda did not like being contradicted by anyone less than a tenth of his own age. "Zygerria. Hardeen. This last mission. Too much, even for Jedi. Rash, the Council has been. Rash, you have been."

He stared. "The war hardly permits us the luxury of caution, master. Or of conscience."

Yoda sighed heavily. "Know this I do. Trust it I do not. The war itself...problematic it is. Into lies and deception has it led us. Young Skywalker: his accusation not without truth, is."

"His _accusation_?"

"Hmmmph. Accused Council of failing morals, he did. Censured he was for interfering in your mission. Too emotional the boy is. Unpredictable."

Except Anakin was all too predictable. But he couldn't say that to Yoda. Not now, not when his control was so compromised. "Then we must strive to prove that accusation unfounded." It was their only hope. If the Council could be seduced into shadow...it was the end. "And...may I suggest...Anakin and I should be assigned as a team, from now on - so far as possible. For many reasons."

The ancient Jedi nodded solemnly. "Understand I do. Discuss it the Council will, when fully recovered you are." A tap of the cane emphasized this last statement.

"Yes, master."

Yoda harrumphed one last time. "Better," he grunted. "And in the meantime, speak with Skywalker you must. Dangerous, his distrust is. Make amends you must, Obi Wan."

* * *

><p>Anakin watched the sparring match with unbecoming envy. Or jealousy. Or both. It should be him, and not Mace Windu, trouncing an entire class of senior Padawans, cutting them all down in one continuous blaze of light as he moved fluidly across the dojo floor. It should be him, and not Mace, who earned the admiring stare on Ahsoka Tano's face and the approving nods and murmurs of the other masters gathered in the observation balcony across the way. It should be him -<p>

A hand settled upon his shoulder and he nearly jumped. "Master."

Obi Wan still looked pale, a bit drawn and tired. And rough around the edges. His beard had finally begun to grow back in, a scruff of auburn and alarming, uninvited grey along his jawline. Vokara Che had grown weary of her irritable and restless patient and released - or inflicted - him upon the Temple at large, though with a strident warning that he was still officially under medical supervision.

"I sense an inappropriate lust for savage combat in you, Anakin."

He wasn't in the mood for jesting. "Kriff off."

The Force tightened between them. "You're angry."

"Yeah. Spare me the lecture. I'm angry, and _you're_ a lying hypocrite. You fake your own death, you consort with scum, you protect foul murderers and lie to your own best friend. You're a _model_ Jedi, Obi Wan."

He could feel every nuance of pain this accusation inflcited - and it felt good. Obi Wan moved to stand beside him, gripped the railing until his knuckles were white.

"I don't wish to lecture you. I wish to...apologize."

Damn it, Obi Wan never made things easy. Anakin shifted, clinging to his anger. He had a right to be angry; Obi Wan should not cheat him out of it like this.

"Do you remember anything about that last night at Lenn's apartment?" he demanded.

"No." The older mans' eyes met his, an unfamiliar vulnerability in their depths. "Do I want to?"

"No," Anakin decided. It was better that way. He wished he could forget. "I broke your rib. You attacked me. It was ugly."

"Yes...we've made a habit of that lately." Obi Wan pretended to be absorbed in the display of technical skill below. "Anakin, I'm sorry. About Hardeen. And this mission. There is little more I can say. And nothing I can do to change what has transpired."

That was it? "What about the Council?" he hissed. "Are they sorry too? For using me? For using you?"

Obi Wan shook his head. "Anakin...I tried to resign from the Council. But they refused to allow it."

"What?" That was the stupidest thing obi Wan had ever said or done. He must really, really be tired. Not himself. Anakin gaped and studied his friend closely, feeling the stress points threading through his Firce signature, the thousandfold faultlines in the mask of calm. He waited.

Silence. Obi Wan was trying to tell him something, something important, something personal. Anakin didn't understand it at all. But he recognized the gesture. His anger coiled back, into the dark places in his soul, leaving aching scars behind. He shook his head, confused.

"And I have requested that we be assigned as a team, from now on."

"What about Ahsoka?" The question covered his momentary shock.

"She'll have to endure our company."

They grinned, the first genuine flare of shared pleasure in a long, long time. A small tendril of hope uncoiled somewhere in the Force. Anakin's wrath subsided, gentled into old well-worn channels, paths smoothed by time and custom. "Just don't do any deathsticks in front of her. You're a bad influence on the younger generation."

"Yes, well."

"And you can't afford to lose any more years off your expected life span. You're getting old fast."

"That, my young friend, has nothing to do with deathsticks. That's all your fault."

Anakin grinned, even wider. It was possible that he did know who his true friends were, after all. And the Chancellor had said to hold fast to those people. He glanced sideways, watched Obi Wan critically and detachedly watching the swordplay below, watched the other masters in the opposite balcony watch him and Obi Wan together. He reached out, gripped his friend's arm in a quick, ferocious gesture of affection, and maybe half-forgiveness, and held fast to what he knew, even in this endless vale of shadows.

Obi Wan had told him to _stay_. He could do that.

For now.


End file.
